A Tale of Two Faces
by shooting-stetsons
Summary: Everyone wishes Nymphadora "Two-Face" Tonks would just die and leave them alone. She gives them their wish. Or, at least, she tries. Then she meets Remus.
1. Prologue

No one really knew why they hated "Two-Face" Tonks so much, but they did. If asked, most people would respond with a shrug and a murmur of "Well…she's _weird_."

Two-Face Tonks, you see, was a Metamorphmagus. A Shape-Shifter. A Dark Creature.

Remus Lupin was not one to judge a fellow Shape-Shifter or Dark Creature, let alone reject one altogether, but he had had no choice. Entering Hogwarts for the first time, he had been alone. His father hadn't let him play with other children much, because when he was younger he tended to let the secret of his lycanthropy slip. He hadn't even been sure he would go to Hogwarts at all he was so nervous about putting so many people in danger. His first train ride to Hogwarts was a lonely one, as he had had to watch three new friends talk happily together across the train corridor from him. So happy.

Every time the long-haired handsome boy looked across at him, smiling curiously, Remus would look away. He didn't want people to be curious about him and his scars.

Then he had met Lily at the Sorting. She was far too kind and scared of her new surroundings for Remus to ignore her. She was his first friend. It wasn't until two weeks later, after his first full moon transformation and a fortnight of awkward silence in the dorm, that Remus was hailed from across the hall by two of the boys from his dorm.

"Hey you!" the handsome Black boy from the train had called. Remus hadn't thought they were talking to him, and kept his eyes on his books. "Over here!" he said louder, and Remus turned to see the Potter boy's hand outstretched toward him.

"It's Lupin, right?" he asked kindly. Remus could tell right there that they had known he was lonely, even with Lily as a friend.

"Um…well…yes!" he said shyly, not entirely sure what was in store for him. He carefully placed his heavily bandaged right hand into the other boy's, and still winced a little when the Potter boy shook it gingerly. "You're…Potter and Black…right?"

"It's James," said Potter.

"And Sirius," said Black.

Remus reluctantly felt a smile and blush creep onto his face. "Okay. I'm Remus, then," he said sheepishly. Sirius and James grinned at him.

"You want to go with us to the Owlery?" offered James. "I have to send my mum a letter every week or she has a panic attack." Remus grinned back and nodded so quickly his fringe fell into his eyes.

"I have to send my dad a letter too," he said, and began to walk alongside them.

"So what happened to your hand anyway?"

"Well, my aunt was a bit ill yesterday, and my dad can hardly take care of himself let alone another person, so I offered to go and look after her for the day. She's got this dog, you see…"

James and Sirius had gotten such a laugh out of his invented story, he kept with it every month after that.

On the first day of his second year, he came face-to-face with Two-Face Tonks when she was still happy. She had arrived at the Platform with bright blue pigtailed plaits, bouncing excitedly as her mother and father kissed her goodbye. Remus had just said goodbye to his own father, and was heading for the train when the smaller girl tripped and collided into him.

"Sorry! I'm so clumsy, sorry so very much! I wasn't look—" she broke off mid-word and blushed as she watched him straighten out his clothes. Remus took in her general appearance and felt somewhat odd around her. It was as if they were alike, but very different at the same time. She was so comfortable with her morphing ability, while Remus hated every day that brought him closer to the next change.

"It's okay," he finally managed to clear out his throat and say. He picked up the bag she hadn't realized she'd dropped and handed it to her. She grinned gratefully. "My name's Remus."

"Wotcher! My name's Nymphadora, but I don't really like that, so everyone calls me Tonks!" said Tonks excitedly. She smiled, and Remus noticed the cutest gap in her front teeth he had ever seen. "Hey, you don't know where I could find Sirius Black, do you?"

"Oh yeah, he should be—" Remus began, but a hand seized the back of his hair and began pulling him toward the train.

"You shouldn't be talking to one of those, Remus, you can never trust someone who never shows their real face," said James sagely, pulling his friend onto the train behind him and not caring if the Tonks girl heard or not. Remus managed to keep his nervous blush away from his face.

"She just wanted to know where Sirius was," he said nervously. James's eyes widened.

"You didn't tell it where he was, did you?" asked his friend with wide nervous eyes. Remus ignored the usage of the word 'it' instead of 'her.'

"I didn't get a chance to, you pulled me away by my head!" Remus exclaimed.

"Good. The last thing we need is a dangerous Shape-Shifter hanging around us," muttered James with a dark glare toward Tonks, whose first name was so bizarre Remus had already forgotten.

Remus certainly had never wanted to be cruel to Tonks, but it was all he could do not to cry with relief when the lads found out he was a werewolf and didn't reject him like the school had rejected Tonks. They would glare at her in the halls, sometimes hissing at her to leave Hogwarts or ramming their shoulders into her as they passed.

Remus had been unable to step in at those times in the halls, as he'd sometimes be too far away, or the people tormenting Tonks would be older than him, but when James, Sirius, and Peter joined in on the "fun," Remus knew he should have done something.

But he didn't, because he found his own selfish desire to keep his friends more important than Tonks's wellbeing and happiness. It wasn't as if he ever joined in on the pranks on her, but he always turned a blind eye. Every day he came closer to hating himself for his secondhand cruelty, but then his friends became illegal Animagi for him and he no longer was able to defy them. They were brothers now, and nothing could ever change that.

Remus tried to keep some sort of watch over Tonks as the years passed. He watched her change from a chipper blue-pigtailed little thing that went along with anything, to a sullen and defensive young woman, who still carried her purple or pink hair like a sort of trophy, but never spoke to anyone beyond class or to protect herself.

The first day of Remus's sixth year, a group of pureblood students from the school had gathered into smaller groups all along every entrance of the train, blocking certain people from getting on. They all held identical banners that read:

_Half-Bloods, Mudbloods, Shape-Shifters:_

_GO HOME!_

They chanted their new catch-phrase while they waved their banners proudly, only granting access to fellow purebloods or aristocrats who had chosen not to organize with the others. Lily was thrown violently backward from where she tried to gain access. Two entrances down, Tonks started dueling Muggle-style against Legolas Yaxley, who failed miserably with his only experience being spell-casting.

Sirius, watching the fight with much interest, let out a low whistle. "Wow, Two-Face has got some game in her!" he said, astounded. "Make a mental note gentleman: Only make a go at Two-Face when we're allowed to use magic against her."

"You forget, Padfoot, that she'll be able to use magic against us as well," Remus pointed out. Sirius furrowed his brow thoughtfully.

"I'm sure we're better duelers anyway," he shrugged. Remus shook his head and followed his friends onto the train. He loved them, but sometimes they were stupid.

With the Dark Lord's new regime against all partial-blooded students, and the Ministry's regime against Shape-Shifters, Tonks was being tortured more than ever from both sides. The Slytherins took to cornering her in the halls and verbally abusing her as well as hexing her mercilessly. If the other Marauders weren't around him (which at least one of them usually was), Remus would take shelter behind a statue and cast a Shield around Tonks, forcing away all of the Slytherins, and the find a quick getaway so he wouldn't be seen helping her.

It was almost always a fruitless effort, however, seeing as any number of hours later Remus would pretend to laugh along with his mates as they hexed her or threw dungbombs into her bag. Their unjustified hate against Two-Face nearly rivaled that of their hate of Snivellus Snape, and therefore they would do anything for another laugh.

They had no idea just how far they would go for a laugh, or what consequences it would bring them.


	2. Chapter 1

Nymphadora Tonks closed her diary with a firm snap, being sure to lock it and wedge the little brown book tightly between her mattresses. If she didn't take certain precautions, her spineless dorm mates would only try to steal it. Again. They make an attempt at least twice a week, and Tonks didn't think she could ever bear to lose her diary. It was her only friend.

With a heavy yawn and a stretch of her shoulders, Tonks opened up her gold bed hangings, took the Freezing Charm off of her bra, and dressed before the other girls had a chance to wake up. She crept down the stairs and into the Common Room with her bag (which erupted a dungbomb in her face, courtesy of the bloody Marauders) and began to touch up her homework.

She had been working diligently for about ten minutes when the stairs creaked to her right. Her head whipped up to meet the bleary eyes of Remus Lupin, yawning and shuffling out from his dorm. A nervous clenching feeling formed in her stomach and a blush crept up to her face. She had been like this around Remus Lupin since her first day, when he picked up her bag for her. Most people would say she was hopelessly smitten, if anyone ever talked to her. He, too, looked rather embarrassed as he tugged at the collar of his pajamas.

"Erm…'morning," muttered Remus quietly.

"Watching!" Tonks sputtered out before turning furiously red at the bemused look on Remus's face. "Um…I was going to say 'morning,' but then started to say 'Wotcher,' so…"

"Yeah," finished Remus awkwardly. He tried to dig his hands into his pockets, but his pajamas pants didn't have any, so he instead brushed off invisible dust. "So…"

"Well…"

"…perhaps I should go change before breakfast…"

"Oh, yeah! Well…see you 'round."

"Um…sure."

With an awkward nod from Remus and a vague wave from Tonks, they separated. Remus retreated quickly up the stairs and Tonks left the portrait hole to wander off to the Owlery, or perhaps get in an early breakfast before the Quidditch team got back from their weekly pre-dawn practice. She had been forced to memorize the team's practice schedule just to avoid the lot of them. One or two of them at a time was at least a little bearable, giving her a chance to defend herself, but if all of them were together and ran into her, she was helpless.

Trudging through snow leftover from Christmas that reached her mid-shin, she realized she would have to pass the Quidditch Pitch on her way to visit her owl Monica. Shivering in a cold breeze even though the sun was getting stronger by the minute, she crossed her arms over her thin chest to protect herself from the cold.

She squinted up at the vacant goal posts, wondering vaguely what it would be like if she had pretended not to be a Metamorphmagus six years ago. Would she have joined the Quidditch team? Probably not, as she was clumsy enough on the ground, let alone fifty to a hundred feet in the air. Would she have friends? She would like to think so. Would she have a boyfriend? Her thoughts turned irrevocably to Remus Lupin and she shivered again, though it was for a different reason.

"Oh look, it's little Two-Face Tonks!" a mocking voice called about twenty feet behind her. She froze in her tracks, wind shuffling her short pink hair that so easily singled her out in a crowd. Even though it was practically a death wish to wear her hair in such a fashion, she stubbornly refused to give in. There were crunching footsteps in the snow all around her, but she couldn't see any of them as she had her eyes tightly shut. Suddenly there was a hand upon her shoulder. She flinched, but knew that physical resistance was useless at this point.

"_Please_ leave me alone," she asked weakly.

"Ah, but where would the fun be in that?" asked the smug Head Chaser and Team Captain. "What color are your eyes today, Two-Face? Are they blood red, showing your dedication to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named? Or perhaps one is green and one silver, showing your commitment to your true House. Only a Dark Creature as yourself could have tricked the Sorting Hat." Tonks opened her eyes—violet, just like every other day—and watched the first rays of sunlight glint off of James Potter's glasses.

"Satisfied?" she asked darkly. Potter let her shoulder go with a smirk, and she stumbled away from him quickly.

"Now I am, as you've given me proper range," said Potter with a vicious grin on his face as he unsheathed his wand from his belt. "I'll give you five seconds' head-start, because I'm _such_ a good sport." As he began to count down, Tonks knew not to waste any time. She turned on her heel and bolted for the castle as quickly as she could, forgetting about the Owlery completely. Dodging a Jelly-Legs Jinx that came at her from behind, she slid on a patch of ice and fell. The Quidditch team roared with laughter as she picked herself up, convinced she had bruised her hip and kneecap, and raced on into the Entrance Hall.

Limping and glad the team had decided to take mercy on her this time, Tonks made her first trip of the day to the Hospital Wing to get her knee checked out.

**Later, in the Common Room:**

"You should've seen Two-Face, it was hilarious," James chuckled as he recalled his run-in with the Metamorphmagus earlier in the day. Sirius barked with laughter and high-fived his best mate, Peter gave his wheezy chuckle, and Remus forced a smile. He hated this.

A group of gaggling sixth year girls came down the stairs, practically shrieking with laughter at something they had allegedly stolen just as Two-Face herself came in the portrait hole. The group of girls ran headlong into Lily, who held up her hand to halt them.

"Hand it over," she brusquely said. The leader of the pack sullenly handed over the little brown book, and the girls stalked off. Lily turned around and handed the book to Two-Face. "Here. Keep it in a better hiding place so _I_ don't have to deal with them again." Two-Face nodded as she limped slightly to the opposite side of the room from the Marauders, stowing the book into her pocket protectively.

"What say you, Prongs?" asked Sirius. "Some juicy stuff in that book?"

"Nah," said James, craning his neck to look over at Two-Face. "Probably just a pathetic little sob-story about how unfairly she's treated."

Remus wanted desperately to shout _'She _is_ treated unfairly, you cruel, bigoted, hypocritical…jerk!'_ but he somehow refrained. Instead, he put a hand over his mouth, masked by simply placing it thoughtfully on his chin as he glanced across the room at Tonks. She was curled up in the window seat, staring out at the grounds' slowly melting snow. Her high cheekbones, her dark eyes (at least he assumed that dark brown was their natural color, as she wore it least often), and her natural thinness and boniness reminded him of something, but he couldn't quite place a finger on it.

"Moony? Hullo? Earth to the Moonster," came Sirius's voice through Remus's haze of thought. He snapped to attention to see his friends staring at him expectantly. "We've been talking to you for about two minutes, but you were drawing a blank."

"Yeah, sorry mate, what did you want?" said Remus foggily; focusing his attention on the lads, and diverting his thoughts every time they started to creep back toward Tonks.

Sirius and James held identical grins on their faces, and there was a certain twinkle to Sirius's eye that always said danger. He had seen that look on Sirius's and James's faces in first year before they figured out how to charm Dungbombs to go off at a certain time. He had seen that look in second year just before they had called him 'Moony' for the first time. He had seen that look in third year before they had tried to teach the giant squid to tap-dance. The look had been there in fourth year when they had discovered the perks of Polyjuice Potion slipped into the drinks of several Slytherins. That mischievous twinkle had been in Sirius's eye in fifth year just before that same shine had been present in the eyes of an enormous dog. In sixth year, when they had finished making the Marauder's Map, it had been present. And it was there now.

"Well, Moony—"

"—Now that you're both here _and_ present—"

"—we've had an idea," finished Sirius and James simultaneously.

"Wormtail, parchment!" Sirius barked, and Peter instantly slammed a sheaf of parchment onto the table, practically trembling with excitement. James instantly snatched up a quill and began writing thoughtfully, sometimes taking out his wand to vanish the writing and start over. He then, with an air of great accomplishment, pushed the parchment to Peter. Peter did the same, though his chewed on his tongue and started over more, before handing it to Sirius. Sirius rubbed his chin thoughtfully, and then pushed it to Remus without writing.

"I really want the last word on this one," he explained. Shrugging, Remus took the parchment in his hands and read what James and Pete had written.

_Mr. Prongs would like to register his astonishment that someone with such hideous hair would have the guts to show their face during the day._

_Mr. Wormtail agrees with Mr. Prongs, and feels compelled to add that the recipient of this note is an unintelligent bint._

Remus couldn't help but snort. Good one on Peter, calling Snape a bint like that. He bit his lip, debating whether he should talk the lads out of giving it to Snape, though. It was rather harsh. On the other hand, there had been a burn of epic proportions forming at the back of Remus's mind for weeks now that he was itching to use on someone, and it would only be appropriate for it to be Snivellus Snape.

_Mr. Moony would like to append that he once had a dog that looked alarmingly like the recipient of this note; Mr. Moony then proceeded to shave the dog's arse and make it walk backwards for the rest of its life, just to avoid looking at its revolting mug._

Sirius took one look at Remus's comment and roared with laughter. "Way to verbally kick arse, Moony!" he cried as he patted Remus's shoulder quite forcefully. He then added his final word, and placed it in the center of the table for them all to see.

_Mr. Padfoot heartily agrees with all, and would like the recipient of this note to go find a rock to die underneath. It would make everyone's lives easier. Good day._

All four of them burst into suppressed laughter as they imagined Snape's face when he looked at the note. It would be oh so sweet.

At least, that was who Remus assumed it was going to. How wrong he was.


	3. Chapter 2

Four straight-backed chairs were lined up alongside the only occupied bed in the Hospital Wing. Four boys occupied the chairs, three of them in a fitful prostrate state, but one sat up straight, staring in absolute horror at the girl in the bed.

Remus Lupin's hands were shaking.

He opened and closed his fists several times to try and calm himself, but he wouldn't stop shaking. All he could think of was how dirty he felt. He had dazed out earlier in the evening, and had had a vision of blood soaking his hands. He had snapped to consciousness, feeling something wet on his hands, only to see that he had started sweating profusely.

He rested his elbows on his knees and placed his face in his hands. Sighing shakily, he lowered his hands and stared down at the girl in the bed. He had never thought that she, always _appearing_ so full of vibrancy, would try to take her own life. Now, her hair was dull and a sharp black contrast to the white pillow. Her entire face was nearly as white as the sheets, even her lips when any healthy girl's would be pink.

But Nymphadora Tonks was not any healthy girl. She had overdosed on a Pain-Killing potion, which was ironically one of the most painful ways to poison oneself.

All Remus could see when he closed his eyes was her frail thin body, sprawled out across the bathroom floor, while the sickly green potion still clung to the shards of her broken glass. He let out a shaky breath and raised his persistently shaking hands to his face again.

_The Common Room was abuzz with post-dinner chatting while everyone discussed anything they had forgotten to earlier in the day, before they forgot in the haze of sleep. Sirius and James were beside the fireplace with Peter, nudging his shoulders encouragingly while Remus watched from the other side of the hearth. His brow had just wrinkled with confusion when Two-Face came into the Common Room. James and Sirius gave Peter one final and forceful nudge and he stumbled toward Tonks with a scroll in his hand._

"_This is for you," he squeaked. "It's a love note from your secret admirer." He had probably sounded so nervous Tonks had believed him, because her eyes flickered in Remus's direction before she took the scroll._

"_Um…thanks, I guess," she muttered before following the rest of her dorm mates upstairs. Sirius and James cackled amongst themselves and patted Peter on the back._

"_Well, we're off to the dorm, Moony, come along," said Sirius as they passed him._

"_I can't, I've got to finish this essay," Remus said apologetically, indicating his Transfiguration homework (for next week) with the tip of his quill. Sirius, James, and Peter all rolled their eyes at their friend's antics before heading up the spiral staircase._

_He had been alone in the Common Room for maybe two to five minutes, diligently working his way through another three inches of his essay. Only five more inches, and he would be done for the night. He was reading over what he had written, occasionally prodding certain parts of the essay with his wand to switch around words in order to make them flow better, when he heard someone positively thundering down the girls' staircase._

_Remus looked up to see Tonks herself burst through the door at the bottom of the stairs. He, remembering their awkward conversation of that morning, sank as far back into his seat as he could in order to become invisible, but she didn't seem to take notice of him anyway. She paused in the center of the Common Room, her thin body racking with great heaving sobs. Half-moonlight filtered through the window and alighted on her face, showing the tear tracks and her miserably black hair. She staggered to the nearest wall and collapsed against it. She slid down the wall and curled up into a ball, one hand tangling in her short black locks._

_Remus felt his heart wrench at the sight of her so wretchedly miserable, but he found himself frozen to his seat instead of rushing to her aid. What if one of the guys came down the moment he placed a hand on her shoulder, thought he was siding with a Dark Creature, and instantly rejected him too? Would he be the next one to endure a hex from the Quidditch team? Would he be the brunt of the school jokes next? What if, thinking he had sided with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, James or Sirius or Peter exposed his lycanthropy to the entire school? He would surely be expelled. He would be unable to look his father in the eye for months from shame._

_Suddenly there was movement, and Remus tuned in to watch Tonks push herself up from the floor, obviously having come to some sort of decision. She went silently up to her dorm, and Remus felt himself nearly sag with relief. She hadn't seen him. He was just about to get up again when Tonks suddenly came back down, one fist clenched tightly. Remus pressed himself into his chair again, hoping to suddenly become invisible. He didn't even dare to breathe._

"_Goodnight Remus," choked Tonks before rushing out the portrait hole. Remus propelled himself from his chair, feeling as if a personal offence had been charged against him. It wasn't as if he was Head Boy or anything, but he was still a Prefect, and she was disobeying the rules._

_But, even in the face of this rule-breaking, Remus hesitated. Something had obviously upset Tonks, and she could be in a rather harsh mood if he followed her. But she also could do something incredibly rash and stupid in her state of distress. He moved to the portrait hole and opened it, looking down the long hall to find it oddly empty. There weren't even any echoing footsteps to show him where she had gone._

_Resignedly, Remus turned around and shot up the stairs to the dorm, and began digging in James's trunk._

"_Oi, get outta my stuff Moony," James grumbled from the floor beside Sirius's bed, where they and Peter were playing a game of poker._

"_There's someone out of bed, I need the Map," retorted Remus instantly, pulling the Map out victoriously. "_I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."_ The map blossomed out over the parchment, and Remus could instantly see where Tonks was, as it was the only dot in a sea of blank parchment. The dot labeled _N. Tonks_ was emerging from a secret passageway (how did she know it was there?) that came out near the second floor girls' bathroom. She entered as if she had planned to randomly run out into the night. The dot stopped at the sinks, moving barely a millimeter every few seconds as she nervously fidgeted. Remus could practically see her, but not what she was doing._

_Suddenly the gray dot of _M. Murray_ showed up beside Tonks. Moaning Myrtle. They appeared to be talking for a few moments before Tonks began pacing the length of the bathroom. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and…_

_Tonks's dot abruptly stopped moving, and Moaning Myrtle's began prancing around her, almost cheerfully. Remus furrowed his brow and moved his face closer to the Map._

"_What's going on, Moony?" asked Sirius. He, James, and Peter made their way over to him and peered down at the Map as well._

"_Tonks is out of bed," Remus murmured absently, squinting as if he didn't trust his eyes. "Do you blokes see that too?" he asked abruptly. Peter squinted as well._

"_It looks like…"_

"…_it's fading," Sirius and James finished for each other._

"_She's…" whispered Remus, unable to finish the thought._

"_Dying," finished Peter._

_The four boys looked up at one another. A single moment crossed between them, and Remus suddenly knew what had happened. They all shot up and ran down the spiral staircase, out the portrait hole, down the corridor, into the secret passageway, and Remus lead the way into the bathroom._

"_Myrtle!" he cried hopelessly. The ghost positively bounded out from behind the sink._

"_Yes?" she asked sweetly._

"_Where…where…?" asked Remus weakly, looking around for a body that wasn't there. Myrtle smirked, looking quite delighted._

"_I'm not going to be alone much longer," she cried with delight, floating to the other side of the circle of sinks and pointing at the floor. They all looked down to see a nearly transparent liquid, with a touch of green, running through the seams in the tile and down the drain in the floor. They rushed around the sinks to find…_

"_Oh sweet Merlin, I think I'm gonna hurl," Peter moaned at the smell. Remus felt sick for a completely different reason. Tonks was lying facedown on the tile floor, her body convulsing, vomit pooled next to her face._

"_Oh my god," Sirius breathed. Remus lurched forward and dropped to his knees beside Tonks, trying to stop her convulsing. James followed closely, his face white and set. Peter was throwing up in the stall Myrtle had died in. Sirius was frozen with shock by the sink._

"_SIRIUS, DO SOMETHING!" Remus found himself screaming, unable to think properly. He had always been the great thinker of the group, always the one to carefully process everything and find a logical answer to all of life's problems. Now, in the face of this, he was unable to think anything but _Oh my god she's dying oh my god she's going to die please oh please god don't let her die not like this not when she's been all alone not when everyone hates her no one will even care that she's died well I'll care if she's died but I could never actually say that why couldn't I say that I have a right to my own opinion DEAR GODRIC, STOP THINKING ABOUT YOURSELF, YOU SELFISH BASTARD A GIRL IS DYING IN FRONT OF YOU AND YOU'RE THINKING OF HAVING A RIGHT TO YOUR OWN OPINION.

_James had somehow started thinking while Remus was panicking, and conjured a stretcher with restraints. He levitated Tonks up onto the stretcher, and strapped her arms and legs down so she wouldn't hurt herself. "Remus, come on!" he shouted, already halfway to the door. Remus snapped back to reality and ran after James, Sirius and Peter following in his wake._

"_Madam Pomfrey!" James shouted as they crash-landed in the hospital wing. Tonks was still convulsing gruesomely. The matron rushed out of her office at the sound of James's voice, and gasped with shock upon seeing Tonks._

"_Oh dear Merlin, what's happened here!" she demanded as she began waving her wand over Tonks helplessly._

"_We don't know, we found her like this," James said hurriedly._

"_She poisoned herself," Peter gasped, still looking green. Madam Pomfrey's head snapped up from where it had been bowed over Tonks's restraints. "There was a broken bottle in one of the stalls, a Pain-Killing Solution."_

"_Oh my goodness," Pomfrey breathed as she began moving her wand faster and faster, her hand becoming a blur with her urgency. "One of the most painful ways to die, ironically enough. The Wormwoodic acids in Wormwood sap, when used in small amounts, will alleviate any muscle or joint pain, but when taken in excess the acid burns through the esophagus and stomach lining."_

"_Can you save her?" asked Remus desperately. Madam Pomfrey didn't answer immediately. "Madam Pomfrey," he asked again, his voice wavering with fear, "can you save her?"_

"_I don't know!" Pomfrey shouted, her face flushing with stress and suppressed tears. "Potter, fetch the Headmaster, and Pettigrew, fetch Professor McGonagall. Now!" James and Peter ran from the Wing immediately, sparks practically flying from their shoeless feet._

_Tonks stopped seizing at long last, but she vomited again and Madam Pomfrey had to quickly turn her head to the side so she wouldn't choke. Remus could horrifyingly see flecks of blood on the floor, among other things. Tonks's body relaxed into unconsciousness, and Madam Pomfrey then cleared the mess on the floor and moved her to a bed._

"_It was a good idea to tie her down, otherwise she would have flown off that stretcher ages ago," she muttered. She suddenly froze. "Now what's this?" she asked herself, reaching down to Tonks's hand._

_Remus felt his heart stop as she pulled the note he had assumed would go to Snape out of Tonks's hand._

"Do you boys have _any_ idea of what you have _done_?" Professor McGonagall asked in a low and dangerous whisper. She would have been screaming to the high heavens if Tonks were not lying beside her. "Well, do you?" she demanded, and all four boys flinched back as if she had brandished a whip at them. "Nymphadora Tonks _could have died_; she _would have died_ if you hadn't been _so fortunate_ to have been wandering out of bed after hours, as you _claimed_ to have been! If I were Head of this school each one of you would be packing your bags _this very instant_, and I would not be the_ least_ bit sorry to see you go! _Each one of you_ have been holy terrors in your own _special_ way since you arrived here six years ago, but to go so far as to provoke an innocent girl to the point of attempted suicide! _Never_, in all my years, have I been so ashamed of my own House! A _hundred points_ will be taken from Gryffindor House, _one hundred points_ taken from _Mr. Moony, Mr. Wormtail, Mr. Padfoot, _and_ Mr. Prongs __each_."

By the time she had finished her tirade, her glasses were sitting lopsidedly on her nose, and she was shaking all over with suppressed rage. None of the boys objected to the deduction of House points, even though that would leave Gryffindor with a total of two points. All of Gryffindor would be furious with them, but they knew they deserved it.

McGonagall's shaking breathing was interrupted by Dumbledore emerging from Madam Pomfrey's office. His electric blue eyes were alight with both anger and horrible disappointment in his students. He strode purposefully to McGonagall's side and confronted the boys one by one, gazing impenetrably into their eyes. It was the longest minute of Remus's life, to stare into that wizened face and know that Dumbledore now saw everything Remus had thought and written on that paper.

"They will not be expelled, or suspended," he rasped after he finished his mental interrogation. McGonagall looked shocked and outraged, while the boys looked surprised but still not pleased. They knew that more was coming.

"As punishment, you boys will sit up with Nymphadora tonight," continued Dumbledore. "You will sleep in shifts, those of you who are awake will watch over Nymphadora, and make sure she does not slip away from us in the night. Madam Pomfrey has had a long day; the Ravenclaw Quidditch Team had a nasty collision she had to clear up, there was an outbreak of Mono among the sixth year Slytherins, and a Hex-war among the third years. Madam Pomfrey deserves a night of rest. However, if Nymphadora is to start fading during the night, you will wake Madam Pomfrey so that she can act in any way she can. Am I understood?"

"Yes, sir," the boys said simultaneously. Remus swallowed hard, questions burning at the back of his throat.

"Is she going to die?" he whispered hoarsely. Dumbledore looked down at him sharply, and he felt his insides burst into metaphorical flames of guilt.

"We do not know what will happen. If she makes it through the night without incident, there is a great chance she will pull through. This leads me to the second part of your punishment.

"If, by some great misfortune, Nymphadora does slip away into the night and cannot be saved, you boys will be expelled from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. You will be placed on the train first thing tomorrow morning without your trunks, your wands will be snapped before your departure, and your parents will not be informed of your expulsion."

"But sir, how are we to get home if our parents don't know?" asked Peter, dreading the worst.

"That is not up to me, Mister Pettigrew, as _you_ will be the ones to tell your parents of your expulsion. _You_ will face the full weight of _your_ actions tonight, and when Nymphadora's mother and father arrive in the morning, _you four_ will explain to them what, exactly, compelled their daughter to make an attempt at her own life. Good night."

And so began the longest night of any of their lives.

They took sleeping in turns, two sleeping while two sat vigil, waiting for Tonks to start dying. But she didn't. She remained eerily silent and still throughout the night, her breathing shallow and short hair splayed across the table. At one point near dawn, during his and Peter's shift, Peter had dozed off. Remus then took a chance to inch forward, take _Nymphadora's_ (he still couldn't believe six years had passed and he had only just learned her name) hand in his, and bury his face in her soft hair.

"I am so sorry," he whispered shakily, stroking her hair with his free hand. He felt tears welling up in his eyes, and he didn't bother to brush them away like any man would. "I never wanted to hurt you. Never once, in six years, did I ever dream of doing anything to you. I'm a coward, I know it, and I should have stood up to my friends a long time ago. If they really cared for my friendship at all, they would have understood. I'm so, so, so sorry, Nymphadora. So very, very sorry."

"Unta m'Nymph'drra," came a voice that was so weak and frail Remus wasn't entirely sure if he'd heard if at all. He raised his head to see Nymphadora stirring slightly. Her eyelids were fluttering, at least.

"Nympha—um, Tonks?" whispered Remus, but she was already gone again. He sat silently, one hand still twined in her hair, for several moments.

"Moony, why didn't you ever stop us?" whispered Sirius shakily. He had woken up. Remus pulled away from Nymphadora slowly, his hands and voice trembling.

"I was afraid," he said in a voice just above a whisper. "You were rejecting her, because she's a Shape-Shifter. A Dark Creature." Comprehension was beginning to dawn on Sirius's handsome features, but Remus didn't stop. "It was all I could do not to throw myself at your feet in fear the moment you first called me 'Moony.' I was afraid that if I defended her to you, you would assume I was joining the Dark side, and reject me the same way you rejected her, and Sirius, I wouldn't have been able to take it."

Remus nearly thought he saw horror flash in Sirius's eyes. "Moony, never. We loved you too much to let you go by the time we found out!" Remus merely bowed his head, not caring to hear for how much everyone seemingly loved him. He would only believe those words when coming from his father or one of the Marauders, as they were the only humans to see him in his _true_ form.

Just as the first rays of dawn rose over the distant horizon, the door to the Hospital Wing opened with such ferocity it slammed against the wall, and two horrified adults shot in. The man had windswept dusty blonde hair and bloodshot brown eyes. The woman had a kind heart-shaped face and long brown hair, and bore a striking resemblance to the boys' temporary ward.

"Nymphadora," the woman moaned weakly, tears streaming from her eyes as she passed the boys without even a glance. The man passed them closely behind her and they both rushed to the opposite side of Tonks's bed, clutching her limp hand and stroking her dark hair the way Remus had not so long ago.

"Dorrie, sweetheart…?" whispered the man helplessly. Remus felt his heart literally splitting in two from the guilt. He moved his eyes to the woman, who looked horribly like someone…

"An…dromeda?" asked Sirius slowly. For the first time, the couple noticed the four boys in the Wing. Remus, James and Peter also turned their heads and looked at him. He was staring intently at the woman. "You're…you're Aunt Druella's daughter, Andromeda, aren't you?"

"Yes," said the woman, apparently named Andromeda. She swallowed tightly. "You're Walburga's boy, aren't you? Sirius, wasn't it?"

"Yeah, I've heard all about you! You're my favorite cous—" Sirius broke off mid-word as he suddenly connected his cousin and the girl lying half-dead in front of him. "…She's _your_ daughter?" he whispered with horror dripping off of every word like a melting candle. Andromeda nodded.

"Yes," said Andromeda. Her eyes suddenly sparkled with tears, and she put her hands to her mouth. "Oh, you sweet boy, I wish Nymphadora had told me of you sooner! And look at you, sitting up with her to make sure she's alright! Oh!"

To the Marauders' horror, Andromeda strode around the bed with a muffled sob, embraced Sirius tightly even though she'd just met him, and _thanked him_ for watching over her daughter in times of such hardship for their family.

"Do you boys know what happened to her?" asked Nymphadora's father, still holding his daughter's hand.

"We know what happened, Ted," Andromeda said impatiently, pulling herself away from Sirius.

"Yes, but _why_?" Ted asked desperately. The Marauders exchanged a grim look.

"It was—" Remus began, but Sirius and James cut him off.

"It was us," they simultaneously said. Slowly and shakily, to the horror of Ted and Andromeda, they began to explain what they had done. How they had forced Remus and Peter to write something insulting, and that only they were to blame for this, as Peter had only delivered the letter and Remus hadn't even known it was going to her. They knew that it was no excuse, but it was all they could offer besides their sincerest apologies.

By the time they finished, Andromeda was staring at her younger cousin with a sense of not knowing what to think anymore. She closed her eyes and put a hand to her mouth before admitting: "Nymphadora has tried to kill herself three times in the past year." She opened her eyes and stared accusingly at Sirius. "People had been sending her _threatening letters_ all through summer and Christmas."

Nymphadora had woken up later that day, set eyes upon her parents, and started shouting for them all to get out and leave her alone. While Madam Pomfrey saw to her, Ted and Andromeda, assured that she would make a slow but full recovery, decided it was time to go home. Andromeda seemed unsure of what to think about her younger cousin, now that he had hurt her daughter to the point of attempted suicide.


	4. Chapter 3

I am a thirteen year old German exchange student, starting my third year at Hogwarts

Tonks spent a week in the Hospital Wing recovering before Madam Pomfrey was satisfied enough to let her out. The Marauders took to avoiding her straight away, but Remus was no longer alone in his once-secret habit of watching over her. She obviously hadn't been feeling very bright and shiny lately, as her hair remained in a state between brown and black since she woke up.

"Just _look_ at her," said Valerie Springs, Sirius's bird of the week, snottily. "Trying to look like one of us, even though we _all_ know she's just a psycho freak who tries to off herself in order to gain our sympathy. What a bitch."

Sirius broke up with her twenty seconds later, resulting in a painful hex to his unmentionables and rendering him unable to speak in any sort of masculine voice for a half hour.

It was on the third day of watching Tonks sit by herself (everyone at Gryffindor table scooting as far from her as they could on the benches), that Sirius decided to act.

"I can't watch this anymore, it's disgusting," he spat, purposefully striding forward and sitting beside his cousin. She stiffened considerably, but kept her eyes on the plate of food she'd hardly been picking at. Neither of them spoke to the other. Remus followed Sirius's lead and sat on Tonks's other side. This time Tonks froze completely, dropping her fork onto her plate with a clatter. Moments later James and Peter sank down in front of them.

None of them spoke to her or anything, but Remus noticed Tonks's face turning bright red out of his peripherals. One moment he could've sworn the corners of her mouth twitched, and his heart leapt to see her even remotely close to smiling. The next moment she scowled sourly, waved her wand and got up in a huff. Before the Marauders could even exchange a confused glance, leeks sprouted out of their ears quite painfully.

"What the hell was that for!?" yelled James as Sirius threw a spoon at her retreating back.

Remus tried to tug the leeks out of his ears, but it hurt to even touch them, let alone pull on them. He felt gratified to know that at least Madam Pomfrey never laughed when students came to her with an injury.

"And who do I thank for this?" Madam Pomfrey asked after about two solid minutes of hysterical laughter.

"Tonks," said the four boys monotonously. Madam Pomfrey started snorting again, but refrained from a full-on attack of the giggles. She waved her wand in a reverse of the way Tonks had, and the leeks vanished. Groaning with thanks and irritation at the matron's amusement, the Marauders left the Hospital Wing.

"_Everyone_ saw that!" said Sirius piteously.

"Not just everyone, _Lily_ saw that," moaned James.

"Why did she hex us?" Remus asked curiously, still rubbing his sore ears.

"Well, it's not like she has a grudge against us or anything," retorted Peter sarcastically. Remus mildly glared at him before making his way down the corridor to start searching for Tonks.

They found her fifteen minutes later in the third floor corridor. Her arms were wrapped around herself as she stared out a window at the sunlit grounds. Her pretty face was drawn and closed, numb brown eyes flickering with occasional emotion. Remus froze in his tracks about ten feet from her, not wanting to disturb whatever thoughts she was mulling over. He knew how important it was to him not to be disturbed when consumed with thought such as those of his mother.

"Hey!" called Sirius petulantly. Tonks snapped out of her reverie and turned so quickly, she tripped over her shoelaces and toppled to the floor in a tangled heap of her own sixteen-year-old limbs.

"What do _you_ want?" she grumbled as she untangled her legs from the green knitted scarf she'd been using as a belt. James offered her a hand up, but she blatantly ignored it and pushed herself to her feet, glaring at the lot of them all the way up.

"We want to know why you hexed us in the middle of the Great Hall," said James menacingly. Remus had to nudge his friend to remind him that they were no longer being deliberately mean to Tonks anymore. He immediately adopted a less harsh expression. Tonks continued to stare at them sullenly, crossing her arms as her scarf fell limply from her waist and to the floor, loosened from tangling with her ankles. She didn't even flinch, and Sirius actually looked impressed for a moment before pressing on.

"So why did you do it?" he demanded, his jaw hardening as he himself crossed his arms. Tonks set her own jaw and straightened up defiantly, and suddenly the fact that they were cousins could not have been more obvious if Peter had suddenly stripped down in front of them, proudly displaying the words "Sirius is Tonks's mum's cousin!" across his chest in Slytherin-colored paint.

"Tonks," said Remus as gently as he could. The cousins' deathly glares toward one another suddenly turned on him. "We just want to know why. It's not like we're going to do anything to you o—"

"_That's_ why!" Tonks snapped hoarsely, gesturing madly at Remus. Her eyes looked wild with both uncertainty and fierce determination to get to the bottom of things. "You all nearly get expelled because you make me want to kill myself, but now that I'm okay you suddenly want to be my best friends? Well, you can forget about it, because I know that you don't care about me at all, you're just worried about trying to save your own skins, because you think that if I do try to off myself again you'll take the blame for it! So either leave me alone or go back to tormenting me. Either way, I'm well enough used to it." Now holding her throat lightly, Tonks turned on her heel and began to walk away from them, leaving her scarf behind.

"You're wrong!" Sirius said loudly, though all of his fierceness from before was gone. Tonks stopped and turned just to glare at him, but he was unfazed. He walked to her, grabbed her elbow, and pulled her back to where she had been moments ago so they all could confront her.

"Yeah, I do care about continuing my education at Hogwarts, but that doesn't mean that I'm a bad person," said Sirius matter-of-factly. "If I had known you came from the only decent branch of my family, I never would have dreamed of harming you. And you knew that we were cousins; why didn't you ever say anything?"

"I tried, but every time I tried to speak to you, you would walk away from me!" croaked Tonks. "Or do you not recall my first day at Hogwarts, when I asked to sit with you on the train and you said 'No, you're weird.'?"

Sirius looked as if he had been thwarted in a game of chess. "Well…that doesn't matter," he said weakly. What matters now is that I _want_ to make it up to you. Being your friend just seems like the best way to do it."

"We do have a lot of influence among the student body," added James after a few moments.

"It could take a lot of the bullying off your load," Peter said quickly after James. They looked at Remus, waiting for him to speak. He swallowed and cleared his throat.

"I never wanted you to get hurt in the first place. You must know that," he said quietly, praying that she remembered how he wanted to talk to her before being pulled away.

Tonks glared at the lot of them, arms crossed over her stomach. Remus bent down, retrieved her fallen scarf, and held it out to her. She snatched it back without a word, still glaring. It was a full minute and a half before an odd look crossed over Tonks's face. It was a sort of horrified "Oh my god, you're actually serious" expression. Once again, she turned and nearly ran away from them, though this time Sirius didn't bring her back.

"I think we made some progress," he said instead with a small nod of his head. The rest of the Marauders nodded with him for a moment before going their separate ways to class.

Remus didn't see Tonks for the rest of the day, but was still mulling over that odd look on her face when he made his way out of the Common Room for Prefect duties. He smiled and nodded at Lily in passing near the dungeons, James thumped him on the back in the third floor east corridor, and Remus stopped for a minute in front of the second floor girl's bathroom. He stared at he door for goodness know how long, still clearly seeing Tonks's body sprawled across the tile floor beside a small pool of her own vomit in his mind's eye. He wondered if the Wormwoodic acid had partially burned through her esophagus or stomach lining, and that was why she was having troubles talking and eating.

He found himself at the last patrol spot of the evening, the Astronomy Tower, before he had time to really think about where his feet were taking him. He climbed the stairs slowly; always careful in case some odd couple was having a romantic endeavor among the battlements. When he finally got to the top and didn't hear any of the tell-tale signs of late night sex, he let out a sigh of relief.

A shadow suddenly moved ahead of him, and he jumped, realizing that in his haste to only hear instead of see, he had missed one small lone figure sitting atop a battlement. It didn't help that this clearly feminine figure was bathed in the blue moonlight. Or…her hair was blue!

"Don't jump!" Remus cried, running to the middle of the circular room, now recognizing Tonks. She turned and glared at him. "Please don't jump; you've got so much to live for!"

"Lupin," she said calmly, but Remus wouldn't hear any of it.

"You've got a family that loves you very much, and you have such potential! I mean, you could—"

"_Remus!_" she shouted irritably. Remus swallowed and fell silent. "Sod off, I'm not here to jump, you prick."

"…Oh," said Remus after a moment. He didn't know what exactly he should do. "So…um…why _are_ you here then?"

"I've got about five different places in this school for privacy, this place was most convenient," she explained bluntly. She turned her wide orb-like brown eyes on him, not moving her gaze until he felt so uncomfortable standing in the middle of the room that he couldn't stand it anymore. Blushing furiously, he sat down beside her on the battlement.

They were silent for nearly five minutes, until Remus heard the distinct sound of Tonks's stomach gurgling. She pulled a face and crossed her arms over her stomach, wincing slightly.

"You must be hungry; I noticed you haven't been eating much," Remus said quietly. Tonks blatantly ignored him, but he had expected that. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small bar of chocolate, dropping it in her lap. She flinched again, but this time with surprise; she had been looking away from him. Remus felt her eyes suddenly burning into the side of his face but he looked determinedly forward, acting as if someone else had given her the candy. The corner of his mouth she couldn't see lifted when he heard the foil wrapper crinkling moments later.

They talked all through the night—not about anything in particular, nothing of the utmost importance. It started with Tonks's comment of 'Look at how pretty the moon is, Remus. It's too bad you're always away to miss when it's full.' Remus had to start talking about something else to distract Tonks from the subject of the moon, which in turn ended up showing him just how brilliant Tonks really was.


	5. Chapter 4

I am a thirteen year old German exchange student, starting my third year at Hogwarts

That next Friday, Lily was walking down the corridor toward Gryffindor Common Room during morning break when Tonks's dorm mates came bursting out from behind the portrait, laughing conspiratorially as they opened…

"Oh, not again!" she muttered to herself, holding up a hand to halt the girls. They simultaneously rolled their eyes as their leader held out the open diary to her. She took it primly, turned her nose up to them maturely, and continued into the Common Room. She smiled and waved at James across the room, earning herself a wink, and ran up to her dorm before he could see her blush, forgetting about the diary in her hand.

By the time she had remembered the diary, she had already looked down at the open page, and set eyes briefly on the name "Remus Lupin." She bit her lip; it wasn't like she was going to stoop to those other girls' level and spread Tonks's personal life like another bit of juicy gossip. She just wanted to make sure Tonks was saying nice things about her good friend Remus. Honestly. She didn't even know why she really had to defend her reasoning, especially to herself. Holding up the diary to eye-level, she quickly scanned the entry.

_Last night…Astronomy Tower…Remus showed up…bloody noble prat…Dunno why he was so red…Candy bar, if you can believe…Talked for ages…Got distracted when subject turned to the moon, though, wonder why…Seems really smart, though I knew that already…He's always been the one to stand back and watch when his friend bugged me, and even though that's just as bad as torturing me, it feels easier for me to forgive him. He seems like he's been genuinely concerned ever since I got here, not just after I tried to off myself. Besides that, there's just this…feeling…that I get around him. It's like we're the same, but totally different at the same time, if that makes any sense. _

_There's something strange about Remus Lupin, but it seems to me that it only brings us closer, instead of pushing us apart like it should._

Lily blinked owlishly down at the diary. She had meant to only skim through it, but ended up reading half of it anyway. So Tonks liked Remus, then? How very cute.

There was a loud cursing coming from the sixth year girls' dorm, and the sound of several things being moved around. Tonks. Lily quickly got up and tucked the diary under her arm, feigning a look of mature impatience. Sure enough, when she got to the dorm Tonks was there, hair a dark coppery orange as she tore aside her golden bed hangings to throw all of her sheets to the floor and search for her stolen diary.

"_No, no, no!_" she moaned to herself piteously. Lily bit her lip and cleared her throat. Tonks spun around and fell over her feet, but didn't take her eyes off the Head Girl.

"Um…the girls in your dorm took this again," explained Lily hastily, holding out the diary. "Try not to lose it again, okay?"

Tonks picked herself up and reached for the brown book. Lily averted her eyes carefully, not wanting the younger girl to see the truth in her green irises. The moment the book was transferred from her hands to Tonks's, however, understanding and slight distress appeared on the sixth year's face.

"Don't tell anyone, okay?" she asked in a voice no more than a whisper. Lily, too taken aback by her apparent ability to read minds (or something along that vein), simply nodded numbly, turned on her heel, and ran out.

That girl was just plain _weird_.

Remus was heading to Potions class after lunch, the only class he didn't have with the lads, when he heard a commotion around the corner. Just listening to several of the students' voices, he knew what was going on. Taking a deep breath, he rounded the corner.

Tonks, her hair pink for the first time since her attempted suicide, was cornered against the wall like a caged animal by three bigger students. They weren't hexing her or hitting her, as far as Remus could see, but upon closer inspection he did see that they were holding out potion bottles full of pumpkin juice tauntingly. They waved the bottles in her face as if baiting her with them.

"Come on Two-Face, take it!" said a burly Ravenclaw girl.

"You'd be doing us all a favor," added one of the boys alongside her, speaking as if trying to get a dog to perform a trick.

"Yes, come on, perhaps you'll even enjoy it for a few moments before the excruciating pain sets in," the second boy said as if pain were a huge bonus.

"Please stop," Tonks begged of them near-silently, clutching her books to her chest as tears began to build in her eyes. Remus had never seen her so upset; in the past she'd been able to hold herself together at least until she was alone. He couldn't take it.

"You three!" he called sharply as he approached them, placing a stern look on his face. "Fifteen points will be taken from each of your respective Houses, and if you're all in Ravenclaw then forty-five points will be taken."

"For having a bit of fun?" asked the girl with a thoroughly annoyed look on her face.

"For tormenting a fellow student," Remus insisted stonily. He continued to glare at them until they left, muttering 'hypocrite' under their breath as they went. He ignored them, and went to Tonks's side, where she had sunk down to sit on the cold stone floor of the dungeons. Her eyes were hidden in one thin hand, and her shoulders shaking.

"Tonks," he whispered, kneeling down and putting a hand on her shoulder. She instinctively recoiled from his touch but, upon realizing who he was, suddenly launched herself at him, sobbing. He wrapped his arms around her tightly, less from instinct than because there was nothing else to do with his flailing arms. He found himself breathing in deeply, her hair smelling of intoxicatingly sweet green apples. "Tonks, come on," he repeated gently, trying to get her up off the floor. It took a few attempts, but she finally allowed him to pull her to her unsteady feet.

"Better?" he asked her as she wiped away the tears that clung to her cheeks and lashes. A single cynical, watery chuckle escaped her lips, almost resembling a silent sob.

"No," she admitted weakly. He could tell the following wan smile was forced. "But I think I will be." He put an arm around her shoulders and began to lead her to Gryffindor Tower.

"You've got this period free, right?" Remus checked indifferently. Tonks pulled out of his grasp and stared at him sternly.

"Yes, but _you_ have class," she pointed out. "In fact, you're walking in the_ opposite_ direction of your next class."

Remus shrugged. "Yeah, that's the problem with these shoes…" he commented casually, not bothering to even hesitate in his path toward their House.

Before Tonks had time to properly think about how daft it was for Remus Lupin to be skiving off class (especially potions, as she almost constantly overheard his mates giving him a hard time about how it was his worst subject), they were at the portrait hole and he had climbed through already. She grabbed the frame of the hole to brace herself—she was still a bit unsteady on her feet—but Remus seemed to sense her trepidation and helped her through.

Sirius, James and Peter, unsurprisingly, had also decided to skive off from class, and were lounging in the Common Room. Tonks was about to retreat up to her dorm to clean up, but Sirius had already looked up and hailed her from across the room.

"Hey Tonksie, come on ov-…er…" He caught eye of the tear-tracks on her face, and his brow wrinkled. Suddenly his face was angry instead of boyishly pleased to see her. "Someone made you cry." Instantly James and Peter were straight-backed and alert as watchdogs. Tonks had never felt both so flattered by their concern and embarrassed by their _unnecessary_ concern.

"I'm fine," she said with as much nonchalance as she could muster.

Sirius scoffed. "No you're not. Someone made you cry, that doesn't exactly mean you're fi—"

"Sirius, really, I'm oka—"

"Who was it, Valerie Springs?"

"Who? No, it wasn't Valerie!"

"Then who was—?"

"Sirius, I'm _fine_!" Tonks insisted loudly, and he finally fell silent. She then became suddenly sheepish and looked at her feet as she muttered: "Remus took care of me," and ran up to her dorm.

From that moment, Remus started avoiding everyone.

He avoided Tonks most strongly. Every time he looked at her a strange fluttery feeling erupted in his chest, and that could not happen. He was dangerous, after all, and did not want Tonks to get hurt again. One slip-up, whether or not it was the strength that Remus sometimes forgot he had getting out of control in a moment of heated passion, or simply forgetting about the full moon in the blissful cloud of new love, could cost Tonks her life. Therefore, he avoided her and hoped she just moved on.

He avoided the Marauders for two reasons. He had always begun to distance himself around the full moon (to avoid possible confrontation and injury because of his heightened strength and irritability) and it was three days away. Plus, he just didn't want them to talk to him about how he obviously liked Tonks more than he should. Sirius had stepped into the role of Tonks's older cousin with much enthusiasm, and could very well kill him if he wanted to, approaching full moon or no.

To make matters worse, Lily took him aside the next day in Potions class, to talk to him about how Tonks had feelings for him already.

The full moon being so near, Remus really couldn't handle the sudden onslaught of talk about his near nonexistent love-life. That evening after Lily talked to him, he made the excuse of going for a bath in the Prefects' bathroom, but instead went down the corridor toward a mural of a man trying to teach trolls how to dance the ballet. As he strolled past the mural three times, he thought about how he required "Somewhere peaceful and quiet." He came up here every few weeks, whenever things got to be too much for him.

Every time he came here, the room was the same. It bore a strong resemblance to the Gryffindor Common Room, though instead of red and gold it was decorated in darker and warmer shades of blues, reds and purples. Much of the time there was also a warm bath or shower (so he was never actually lying to his friends) included.

There was something different about the room when he entered, this he could tell immediately. Then he realized the dull fuzzy sound in his ears was the sound of the shower already running; an unusual occurrence. He stepped on something that gave way more easily than the already soft carpet, and looked down to gawk at a familiar Weird Sisters T-shirt. Tonks. He looked up at the shower again, his palms suddenly very sweaty. Just the thought of that beautiful Metamorphmagus standing beyond that glass door was enough to send shivers to all the right places. His breathing became shaky and shallow.

He could have Required another shower, he could have sat down and waited for Tonks to finish, or hell, he could have _run for the hills_, but instead he silently pulled off his clothes, and opened the shower door. He was acutely aware that Tonks would be able to see every jagged scar on his pale skin, but all thought was foggy and vague as he stepped into the shower.

To say that Tonks was surprised would be an understatement. She did, after all, ask for somewhere peaceful and quiet, just like him. She tried to cover herself only halfheartedly, her lack of effort showing as one breast was simply sitting in the crook of her elbow. And, even though she was beautifully naked and exposed, Remus refused to take his eyes from hers until she let him. When her eyes widened with the obvious question of _what the hell_ he was doing, Remus simply shrugged and said "It saves water." Her mouth twitched, and she finally let her eyes roam over his every scar and mostly-healed laceration from the previous month's full moon. He expected her to ask questions, but they never came.

Slowly, Tonks dropped her hands to her sides as well, but then shivered from a draught coming through the open shower door. Remus reached behind his back and closed it, finally allowing his own eyes to wander over her. His first thought, besides "What the hell am I doing?" was of how there could be anyone in the world more beautiful than the girl in front of him. She had inherited her slim, almost bony at times, figure from her mother's side of the family, as Sirius had a similarly skinny frame. He blushed when he saw that black was, indeed, her natural hair color as well.

Around ten minutes after their shy, inexperienced eyes had finished their wanderings, the water was turned off, and they both climbed out of the shower to see soft fluffy white towels the size of bed sheets waiting for them. They didn't bother dressing, instead wrapping up in their own warm white cocoon before lying side-by-side in front of the fire. For several minutes, all they could do was watch the firelight dance off of one another's skin and eyes, but Remus finally broke the silence by asking (in an oddly hushed voice) how Tonks had found this place.

"I found it last year," Tonks explained, drawing little meaningless designs in the carpet as her hair dried. "I was just walking by; when the first time I passed I was wondering why Barnabas was trying to teach trolls the ballet anyway. I started walking backwards and passed it again, wondering if Barnabas had had any descendants (wanting to know if I should watch out for them). Then I thought it might be interesting to read a book about him as I passed the third time and, lo and behold, a door popped out of the wall. I opened it and found two books: one being a biography of Barnabas Twitt, the other being a long dull tome chronicling his slow spiral into insanity, ending with him deciding to teach aforementioned trolls ballet before his 'untimely and unfortunate demise'." By the time she finished they were both on the verge of quiet laughter.

"I found it my second year," Remus said without any prompting from Tonks. "I was trying to hide from my friends, and a broom cupboard showed up." Tonks's face twisted with confusion.

"Why were you hiding from your friends?" she asked.

Remus was not about to tell the truth. He had been trying to hide from them because they had just told him they knew about his lycanthropy. He had been terrified out of his wits, thinking they would either turn on him like they had Tonks, or simply ask that he be moved to another dorm. Either way, he would have been too lonely to carry on anymore, even if it had meant he would be with Tonks sooner rather than a week and a half after she tried to kill herself.

"We had a row," he finally decided slowly. Tonks nodded quietly, though he could see that she didn't believe him for a moment.

In that instant that she didn't ask any questions, something passed between Remus and Tonks. It was an infallible trust, formed simply by the fact that Remus had had the gall to open the shower door while they were both exposed (Sure, Remus had been as aroused as any other teenage boy would be in the presence of a beautifully naked girl, but he had not acted on it). She had let him see her at her peak of vulnerability, and he had let her see his scars. He either had to trust her or Obliviate her memory, and he was not about to Obliviate her memory.

"So…now that I know you know about this place, you've already found two of my five secret spots around the school," said Tonks vaguely, now staring up at the high domed ceiling. Remus turned back to her with rapt attention. "Perhaps I could…" she raised one delicate eyebrow and looked at him in a near 'come hither' fashion, "…show you the rest sometime?"

Remus felt his own eyebrows fly up, though he kept the rest of his face calm. "I'd like that," he found himself whispering. A clock that had just appeared above the fireplace chimed in the hour, and Remus realized that curfew was in ten minutes. "We should probably go."

Silently and with their newfound trust emanating between them like phoenix song, eliminating all sort of self-consciousness, they dressed and left the Room of Requirement.

"Remus?"

"Yes, Tonks?"

"…Thanks."

"For what?"

"For…you know…"

"…No, I don't know…"

"Well…erm…I just…you got that spot on my back that I always have trouble reaching. So…thanks."

"No problem, Tonks."

At least until they decided to come again.


	6. Chapter 5

I am a thirteen year old German exchange student, starting my third year at Hogwarts

"It was the most amazing night of my life," Remus summed up the next morning in the dormitory. He hadn't bothered changing into pajamas the night before, and hadn't yet gotten up from where he was lying spread-eagled on top of his covers. His friends were staring at him as if he were quite mad.

"Moony, old friend?" asked Sirius in an almost deadly sort of friendly voice. Remus sheepishly raised his head to acknowledge him. "You didn't, by any chance, _have sex with my little cousin_, did you?" Remus shot up into a sitting position, his face drained of all color. He raised one hand as if to shield himself from projectiles.

"_No!_ No, no, no I didn't, I swear!" he assured his friend, hoping they didn't think he was lying. Thankfully, Sirius shrugged tensely and sat back on his bed. Remus let out a slow breath.

"If she had white hair and eyes, she could have been a moving stat—"

"_That's enough_!"

...

_I have never felt this way before in my entire life._

_I mean, it was as if, in exposing himself to me, Remus was showing that he trusted me. _He_ trusts _me_!_

_He has so many scars. It would have frightened me if I weren't already frozen with shock. Once he got within about a foot from me, and I could see every inch of him, I felt something I can't really explain. It was as if…as if there was some sort of Great Sadness that came from him. When I slipped and he touched my shoulders, I felt the Sadness seep beneath my skin and plague my very heart with an irrational sadness. It took all of my best efforts not to burst into tears right there. He is full of sadness, but I could never imagine why._

_There is something strange about him, and I am almost certain that this Great Sadness is associated with his scars as well. But that doesn't matter to me right now. All I care about right now is that, for once in a very long time, I felt like someone actually cared about me. And now, even though I'll probably never be able to look Remus in the eye after last night, I still feel like I can trust him. I don't think I ever had a choice in the matter of my trust in him. It just happened, and I'm so glad it did. I just feel so…secure, around him. Like, even though my life's been pretty bad up to this point, it no longer matters now that I'm his friend._

..

An hour after Tonks wrote in her diary and hid it in her trunk, her roommates' leader, Eva, got up and stealthily unlocked Tonks's trunk. Grinning like the wicked girl she was, she pulled out the diary and opened it up. This time, the other girls weren't involved. It was much easier to get things done without three other girls giggling nonstop around her. She read the last entry and felt a truly inspired laugh coming on, but she refrained. Instead, she waved her wand over the page, muttering a Copying Charm as she did so. Instantly, 800 copies were neatly stacked on top of the entry. She allowed herself one small snigger as she put the diary back and tucked the copies of the diary entry into her bag before going to bed herself.

The next morning, Eva walked into the Great Hall before everyone else had even woken up (but waited long enough so she wouldn't be breaking curfew), her bag on her hip. Reaching in, she took out a fistful of the copied diary entries, the backs of which had also been labeled with "EXCLUSIVE FROM THE DIARY OF A DARK CREATURE" in bright red. Walking the length of the Great Hall, she threw the papers up into the air until her bag was empty and the Hall scattered with parchment. She smirked, proud of her handiwork, and went back up to bed.

...

By noon that day, Tonks couldn't be found anywhere in the castle, and the Marauders were in a worried frenzy. Remus had seen her once in the hall; she had passed him without a word even though he had been talking to her. He had heard about her diary entry ten minutes later. He didn't see her for the rest of the day, but made periodic checks to the Marauders Map. She was, puzzlingly enough, not on the Map at all. Remus only hoped that wasn't because Nymphadora Tonks no longer existed, but instead because she had left the grounds or gone somewhere they hadn't documented on the Map.

The next day, during his free period, Remus went out to the Grounds to look for Tonks. It was getting warmer outside every day, so he hoped that she had come out to enjoy the sun. And, sure enough, he could see a vaguely feminine silhouette moving along the low wall Hagrid had built to keep students away from his pumpkin seedlings. He had no idea how he suddenly knew it was her, when it could have been any other skinny female in the school, but he did know that it was nothing short of instincts. He stops about ten feet away from her, watching her go slowly around the soon-to-be pumpkin patch atop the wall, now able to see her purple hair.

"You've been avoiding me," he stated, his voice carrying even though he hadn't spoken very loudly. Tonks, surprisingly, didn't even flinch.

"No I haven't," she said simply, not even looking up from where she was concentrating on her footwork. She paused for a moment, looked up, and then added: "Perhaps you and I have just been seeking each other out in different places at the same time."

He could tell she was lying, and wasn't sure why, but decided to play along as he took a few steps closer to her. "Well…it _is_ a big castle." He dug his hands deep into his pockets and waited for her to speak again, but she seemed far too absorbed in her circular path along the stones. There was at least a silence of two minutes before Tonks broke the silence.

"Remus?"

"Yes?" Remus replied immediately, his head snapping up alertly.

"I think I'm about to fall, so I'd appreciate if you'd catch me."

Now noticing that Tonks's ankles had started wobbling dangerously, Remus dismissed the thought of catching her and instead strode up to her completely, wrapped one arm around her waist and one around her knees, and literally swept her off his feet and into his arms. It would have been horribly romantic if Remus, being in a slightly weakened state from his body's rejection of the Wolf's strength and agility that would come only if he embraced the Wolf completely, hadn't fallen backwards. Luckily they landed in a particularly soft and springy patch of grass and moss, though it had still hurt Remus's prematurely aging bones.

"Well, I'm perfectly comfortable here, how about you?" Remus said breathlessly after a few minutes. Tonks quickly crawled off of him and settled at his side. A gentle breeze flitted through the tall grass, ruffling their hair and clothes as sunlight seemed to glitter off of Tonks's skin. She was the image of perfection, for all Remus knew. He reached out and nudged her hand with his. She turned her hand over, ready to lace her fingers through his, but Remus didn't make a move to touch her any further. Instead he probed her with his eyes, asking for the truth.

"Okay," she sighed, closing her eyes before turning her face toward the sky. "I guess I was avoiding you…because I've never really done anything like this before, and I didn't want to mess things up with you." Her lips tightened, as if she wanted to say more but just couldn't.

"Plus the thing with your diary didn't help matters much, either?" prompted Remus gently. Tonks's eyes flew open, and she looked at him with such a raw emotion he nearly had to look away.

"No, it didn't," she whispered. Remus didn't respond right away, instead listened to the sound of the breeze running tantalizingly through the forest's many trees' leaves. He stared up at the sunny blue sky, wondering how it could have been so cold and bleak only two weeks ago, and now felt like summer was on the way.

Realizing he'd been silent for a very long time, he finally spoke up. "I do hold a lot of sadness inside of me, Tonks," he said quietly, being careful not to look in her suddenly attentive (and hungry?) eyes. "Exposing myself to you the way I did…all of my scars…I didn't even dress in front of the other lads until they—" he cut himself short, realizing he was about to say 'found out about my lycanthropy,' so instead stammered "—told me to sod off and they wouldn't make fun of me, so after only really knowing you for a few days…." He faded off weakly, before whispering in a shaking voice:

"It was the hardest thing I've ever had to do in my life."

He swallowed, hard, and looked over at Tonks. She was staring attentively at him, and Remus was shocked to see that her eyes were wet. What was even more remarkable was…he was almost certain her eyes held such emotion…for him. He wanted so badly to tell her the truth, to scream it out, but knew that that would only cause her more pain on his behalf. Instead, he would have to lie to her.

"Tonks…" He fought to bring his voice above a trembling whisper. "I…I have to go away for a day or two. My aunt is ill."

Tonks didn't speak, but instead continued to stare at him with her beautifully piercing eyes. He knew that she desperately wanted to ask why he's always got to go home every time a relative falls ill. But she didn't. Though Remus did see something change behind her eye, which was not at all related to morphing. She was beginning to put the pieces together, just as the Marauders had. Instead of saying anything particularly incriminating, she simply smiled at him and said:

"Okay. See you when you get back."

..

Sirius really hated full-moon detentions, especially when said detentions lasted until after the actual moonrise. He ran through the corridors at full-tilt, making for the Astronomy Tower to try and get a look at where the lads were before going out.

When he reached the top of the winding staircase, he stopped in his tracks. His cousin was sitting with her knees curled to her chest on top of one of the battlements, dangerously close to the edge, and looking melancholy.

"Tonks?" he asked quietly. She didn't answer him. "Tonks," he repeated firmly, but still she did not respond. "Nympha—"

"Don't call me Nymphadora."

Sirius scowled slightly, but it faded when he realized she had spoken only half-heartedly. She was only keeping up the argument because she was stubborn, not because she genuinely cared about her first name. He took a few tentative steps toward her, before settling himself at her side on a battlement.

"Well, I don't like calling you Tonks either. I'm calling you Dora whether you like it or not," he stubbornly said.

Tonks couldn't fight her small smile. "I like that," she quietly said. The smile quickly faded, however, as she played with her fingers in her lap. Sirius couldn't stop staring at her.

"Don't-…don't try to kill yourself again, okay?" He bit his lip as Tonks slowly raised her eyes up to his. "I mean…you're _not_ going to try again…are you?" Tonks's violet eyes abruptly faded to dark brown as she turned her head out toward the grounds.

"I don't know," she answered, and Sirius knew she was telling the truth. She took a slightly shuddering breath as a single howl broke through the night air. Sirius froze, remembering why he was up here in the first place; how long had Tonks been up here?

"You…don't know?" asked Sirius to divert his cousin's thoughts from the howl. Her mouth twisted slightly.

"It all depends," she elaborated. "I…sometimes, I have relatively good days that I would never dream of trying to harm myself. Other days, something that would seem completely insignificant to anyone else will trigger every bad thought I've ever had about myself. _I'm ugly, I'm stupid, I'm unnecessary, I'm an abomination, I'm a burden to my family_; it doesn't stop until I do something about it. A good night's sleep after a self-loathing fit of angry crying usually does the trick."

Sirius stared at his cousin in an awed silence for over a minute. The only sound that permeated the silence was a gentle gust of wind blowing about crumpled bits of parchment and damp leaves along the floor of the tower.

"Well that's no good at all," he muttered. Tonks finally looked at him, her face bemused. "I know exactly what you need, cos!"

"And what would that be?" drawled the younger witch. Her cousin grinned.

"You need a big brother, and I am going to fill that role," he puffed up proudly. One delicate eyebrow rose up in that Black Family 'You know you're absolutely ridiculous most of the time, right?' way. "Yes I do know I'm ridiculous most of the time, but that has nothing to do with this!" Tonks blinked confusedly, possibly thinking he could read minds. "Family trait, dear."

"…Oh…"

"Anyway, my first act as your big brother is—"

"Big brothers have acts?"

"…Shh! As I said, my first act as your brother is definitely going to be keeping _you_, little lady, away from thinking those suicidal thoughts, m'kay?" He then smiled so casually and so easily at her, it gave her the willies that he could speak about suicidal thoughts in such a way. But then again, his smile was so charming at the same time. And, knowing he was being genuine, Tonks felt a most curious itching behind her eyes. She rubbed at the corner of her right eye absently before staring out at the brilliant stars.

Then, to Sirius's own surprise, he suddenly found her gently leaning against his shoulder. He stared down at his cousin as if he had never seen anything quite like her before. Plus, her hair smelled good. Like sweet green apples.

He would just have to apologize to Moony in the morning, because he wouldn't have wanted to leave Dora all by herself on that tower even if he had been paid. He was conflicted, really; he always wanted to be there on the full moon in case anything went wrong (he was the only other one with impressively canine claws and teeth, after all), but now he felt as if there was someone out there who really depended on him besides himself.

It was a good feeling.


	7. Chapter 6

I am a thirteen year old German exchange student, starting my third year at Hogwarts

Sirius and Dora finally went their separate ways around three in the morning, trudging Disillusioned up the stairs to the Common Room and into their dorms, but not before Sirius taught her a handy charm to keep the other girls in her dorm away from her diary. She had gone to sleep with a smile on her face, imagining the ugly boils that would show up all over Eva's pretty face the moment she touched her diary.

Despite her late night, Dora ended up waking before everyone else and unable to go back to bed, even after only three hours of sleep. Curfew had already ended for the benefit of the school's three early risers, so she wandered down to the Entrance Hall, contemplating a glass of juice and maybe a few bites of toast as an early breakfast.

Quite suddenly the doors to the Entrance Hall opened, admitting an older man who looked as if he'd seen a ghost. Tonks turned to him quickly, wondering why he was here, but tripped over her shoelace and toppled to the floor. The man took no notice of her, but instead murmured something incomprehensible to himself as he staggered past toward the Grand Staircase.

"Um…sir?" Dora asked uncertainly, wondering if, perhaps, a Muggle had somehow found his way into the castle, but he looked too familiar for that. "Sir, do you need some help?"

The man looked up at her with bloodshot eyes, his brown-and-gray streaked hair disheveled and untidy. He took a step toward her, and she could see him trembling. "My son," he said in a raspy voice. "My son, Remus, is very ill and I need to see him."

Dora could not have been more dumbstruck if the man had stripped down, danced the Macarena, dropped to one knee and declared his undying love for Severus Snape. A most absurd echoing sound had filled her ears. "Remus is ill?" she asked, not really aware of the words tumbling from her lips. The man ran a hand over his mouth and nodded, tears shining in his eyes.

"You know my boy?" he asked hoarsely. Dora nodded silently, feeling a little faint with worry. "I…I can't remember the way to the Infirmary; I don't suppose you could show me the way?"

Dora hadn't even had to think before she had gently grasped the older man's wrist in her fingers and began to move toward the staircase. Her mind was a fog of concern for Remus; had whatever illness his aunt had passed on to him? What if he was dying? Her thoughts followed in this tangent until she opened the doors to the hospital wing, not entirely sure how she'd gotten there without falling.

The curtains around Remus's bed were open because his friends, as if they had woke up that morning knowing something was wrong, were already there. The three of them were holding onto Remus's right arm, the only part of him that wasn't grotesquely mangled, as if they were tethering him to this world.

He looked horrible. It made Tonks both want to scream with horror and cry at how badly he was hurt. There were bandages wrapped all the way up both of his arms, and thick layers of partially bloodstained gauze practically keeping his bare torso from falling apart. Dora inched closer to the bed, not realizing she had let Remus's father's wrist out of her grip until he was beside his son as well. She could see that Sirius's eyes were red and swollen, and his hand was wrapped so firmly around Remus's that his knuckles were white.

Madam Pomfrey came out of her office with a potion bottle in her hand, and noticed the Infirmary's two new occupants. Her lips tightened, and Dora thought that the matron might try to kick them out so Remus's father could have privacy with his son, but instead she said that they were excused from today's classes in a tight voice and rushed off to her office again. It was after five minutes that Dora realized she was still standing in the middle of the room, and carefully sat down beside Remus's father.

They didn't talk much. Remus's father (who introduced himself as John) asked after the boys' parents after a while, and Dora introduced herself at last. The moment her name passed her lips she realized she had called herself "Dora Tonks," and that John was smiling to himself.

"You must be the girl my Remus told me about in his letter. He speaks very highly of you," he said kindly, though his eyes were still sad. Dora swallowed the lump in her throat.

"He must have been talking about Lily; I'm not all that impressive, really." She shook her head to herself as she tentatively reached out and rested her hand on the blanket beside Remus's leg. She could feel warmth rolling off of him, and was vaguely worried about him having a fever. She bit her lip so hard she was surprised when she didn't taste blood.

John was smiling a bit now. "I wouldn't be so sure. He speaks of Lily like a sister; you, however… - Remus?" Everyone's heads snapped to the head of the bed, where a small whimpering sound had come from when John had stopped speaking. Dora felt her heart wrench when she saw fat tears of pain rolling from Remus's eyes, soaking into the thin bandages that ran diagonally across his face. His eyes opened into slits, but Dora could tell he wasn't really there with them.

"Dad," he whimpered in a cracked voice, and John squeezed his hand.

"I'm right here son," he said reassuringly.

"I…want…_Mum_…" said Remus with a plaintive note of childish need. Dora was certain that she would cry now, seeing John's face as he smoothed Remus's blankets.

"I know son, she'll be here soon," he lied. Dora could tell that he was lying by the way his voice shook. She bit her lip and focused on the weave of Remus's blanket, gently reaching out and petting his leg in what she hoped was a comforting gesture. By the way Sirius was watching her she knew she was doing something right. It didn't seem much to matter, though, as Remus's eyes had already closed again.

The rest of the day's classes passed without Remus waking again. None of them left the Infirmary to eat, and only spoke to express their confidence that Remus would be alright. When evening fell, Sirius, James, and Peter had to leave and serve a detention, but not before giving Remus's right hand a squeeze and tightly embracing John. Once they had gone John moved to Remus's right side, and Tonks took his place holding Remus's left hand.

"Dear, perhaps you should go to your dorm and get some rest," John suggested around midnight. Dora, who had been silent all day, finally looked up from Remus's mangled face and said that she would be fine, thank you very much.

However much time passed before they spoke again, Dora was unsure. All she knew was that she hadn't intended to initiate a conversation with this man she didn't know, no matter how much he reminded her of his wonderful son. "Where _is_ Remus's mother, John?"

John's lips tightened for a moment before he sighed quietly. "Remus's mother no longer lives with us," he admitted quietly. "My son…fell ill…when he was five years old. We were in denial at the time, believing we could find a cure and trying as hard as we could to find it, but…my wife just couldn't take it after a while. She was afraid, and had never really handled her fears well.

"Sometimes, she believes that she's strong enough to be around us again and comes home, but it's usually about a month before she realizes she is still afraid. It's hard on Remus, not only having to suffer under his illness but also his mother's rejection, but at least we always have each other, right?"

He looked up at Dora, and she realized that he wanted an answer from her. She opened her mouth, and closed it again when she realized that she had no idea what to say. John appeared to understand, but he didn't smile as kindly as he had before, a hint of sorrow washing over his wearisome features.

"I've always been able to handle the months alone while Remus is at Hogwarts, because I know that, if I'm patient enough, he'll always come back for Christmas and Easter and summer…. What am I to do if I lose him now? If I'm alone forever, how long am I meant to wait?"

Dora couldn't answer him.

Remus finally awoke around three in the morning, and the first thing his eyes were drawn to was Dora. She was hunched over against his side, her back at a perfectly uncomfortable-looking 90-degree angle. Even so, after wondering how he'd gotten here in such pain, he thought that with her black (sadly enough) hair shining in the waning moon's light, she looked very pretty.

"I'm glad to see you awake, son," said a quiet hoarse voice to Remus's right. He moved his eyes instead of turning his head (his neck wasn't aching, but he was almost certain it would if he moved it), and saw his father sitting at his bedside.

"Dad," he croaked, his vocal chords protesting wildly. He swallowed and looked pointedly at Dora. "Um…what's…?" His dad smiled.

"She was concerned for you. The lads would have stayed, but they had detention," he explained. "I told her about Mum, sorry." Remus felt his stomach plummet slightly as he looked down at Dora again. "I had to explain why she left, and so I told her the usual story. You've been ill since childhood."

"How'd she take it?" asked Remus quietly. Dad's smile seemed sadder than before.

"Let me just say that the only reason she fell asleep is that she put her head down so I wouldn't see her cry. The poor girl's pride is just too much for her. It was about twenty minutes ago."

Remus didn't respond, but continued watch over Dora carefully. He could suddenly feel that her hand was wrapped around his and felt a small smile tug at the corner of his mouth. Dad hadn't missed it.

"Well, seeing as most of the danger was while you were unconscious, I no longer feel obligated to stay awake." He gave Remus's hand one last squeeze, and then a few pats before standing up. "Good night, son."

"'Night, Dad," said Remus quietly. He waited until he could hear his father's slow even breathing (with the occasional snore) before he began running his thumb slowly over Dora's knuckles a few times. With a sudden jerk of her shoulders she was awake. She took in a deep sleepy breath as she turned her head to face him, eyes wide with surprise. He noticed the tear-tracks on her pale cheeks and felt sorry that he had worried her so much.

"Remus," she whispered, sitting up (and wincing) and leaning closer to him. "How are you?"

"I'll live, I assure you," said Remus quietly. "I'll just have some new scars to show off." He felt the bandages moving as he spoke, and felt his stomach plummet. He couldn't hide these scars.

"Remus," whispered Dora again, and this time she spoke the question in her eyes instead of pushing it away. "What in the world happened to you?"

Remus swallowed and took a deep breath, thinking as quickly as he could while his mind was a bit foggy with pain. "Well, you see…my aunt, she lives in the middle of this big wood, and she forgot to warn me about this pack of feral dogs wandering around, so…yeah."

Tonks felt a sigh escape her. She wasn't sure if it was of relief that he would be alright, or frustration that he had managed to let a bunch of dogs hurt him. She wasn't fully capable of thinking clearly, as she'd been out too late the night before and had only slept for a short time tonight as well, so she nodded. Remus smiled at her in his charming crooked way she loved and squeezed her fingers.

"Go back to sleep Dora."

"No! I'm fine; I want to stay up with you!" Dora exclaimed, but she was so tired her words slurred together and came out more like "No! 'M fan; ewenna stupwitchoo!"

"Hey, I'm going to sleep myself, so you might as well catch a few hours as well," Remus said reasonably. Dora's mouth twisted reluctantly, but she finally lowered herself back down onto Remus's mattress after he laid his head back and closed his eyes. Once she was settled down again, he opened his eyes and watched her sleep for a while. He let the sound of her slow breathing lull him to sleep as well.

When he awoke in the morning, as if they were able to read his mind, the Marauders showed up and informed him (in hushed tones as Dora was still asleep beside him) that they had already started spreading the story about him being attacked by wild dogs at breakfast. James passed on to him that Lily had sent along her love as well, but had to talk to Professor Slughorn about an essay she'd made a mistake on, and promised to come by later.

Ten minutes before class was due to start Madam Pomfrey came back and, since Remus was no longer in critical condition, they all had to go to class today. Dora had looked disappointed while still rubbing the sleep from her eyes, and didn't seem to notice that she was leaning down and kissing Remus's cheek in farewell until the Marauders started sniggering. Now quite awake, Dora turned bright red and nearly ran from the Infirmary, leaving Remus to heal alone.


	8. Chapter 7

I am a thirteen year old German exchange student, starting my third year at Hogwarts

After some heavy-duty healing potions and a lot of hard spellwork, Remus was able to get back to class the next day, despite Madam Pomfrey's protests that he should get more rest. He was obstinate about going that day and catching up with what he missed in one day of absence. All Madam Pomfrey could do was order him to take it easy in order not to open up any partially healed wounds, and to report to the hospital wing every eight hours to get bandages changed.

Remus, after realizing that school was much more wearisome when recovering from a particularly harrowing full moon transformation, soon found himself with a new companion at mealtimes. Dora would never really say much to him while sitting beside him, but she would make an impatient noise in the back of her throat if Remus didn't eat as much as she deemed appropriate. She would, however, continue barely touching her food as she watched over him. Remus pointed out the hypocrisy of her actions, and she made a disgruntled face at him, but then started eating a bit more as well whenever she was with him.

Sirius watched all of this with probing eyes, and after a week of this odd behavior he cornered Remus in the Gryffindor Common Room. "Hey mate, you feeling better?"

Remus smiled at him wanly as he pushed his Arithmancy essay away. "I'm feeling great Padfoot. Did you need anything?" He eyed Sirius nervously as he sat down on the arm of his chair.

"Well, I was just wondering…"

Quite suddenly James and Peter were on his other side.

"We were _all_ wondering, actually—" Peter added.

"—Whether or not you're dating Dora," finished James.

Remus turned bright red. "What on earth gave you that idea?"

"_Besides_ the fact that the two of you have been practically inseparable for over a week?" asked Sirius.

"Only at mealtimes," Remus argued.

"Either way, you two appear to be quite cozy, all holed up together at your end of the table," James shrugged. Peter nodded along enthusiastically. Remus rolled his eyes and gave a long-suffering sigh.

"Well, sorry to disappoint, but Dora and I aren't dating." And with that he turned back to his essay. The other Marauders exchanged a dark look over Remus's head before crossing the Common Room and engaging a very curious Lily in quick whispered conversation.

Remus tried not to watch them even as he heard Lily hastily whisper "I know! I'll do it tomorrow!" and rush off to Head duty with James. His quill-bearing left hand twitched slightly, wondering what Lily had in store for him, but pushed on with his essay for another twenty minutes before Dora herself drifted through the room, smiled shyly at him, and went upstairs. After that he decided to quit for the night, unable to focus on anything but that tiny smile that always made him feel Dora had reserved just for him.

When Dora had been alone in her room for over an hour, not up to much more than staring at her bright gold bed hangings, she heard the door open and sat up. She was glad that her hangings were closed, as she had sort of zoned out while she was putting on her pajamas and was now only wearing a purple camisole and her favorite pair of pink Weird Sisters strawberry-printed 'girly-boy underoos,' as she liked to call them.

"Dora? Are you awake?"

Dora felt herself relax considerably. It was only Lily. "Yeah, I'm up. D'you need something?" she asked as she opened her bed hangings and reached for her bathrobe. The corners of Lily's mouth twitched at the sight of her underwear, but otherwise didn't comment as she sat down.

"I just thought we could talk…" she said airily. Dora eyed her warily. "…about Remus." The younger witch groaned and dropped her face into her hands. "What?"

"Sirius already talked to me earlier!" complained Dora.

"I'm not going to drill you like Sirius has, don't worry," Lily assured her as she flipped her fiery red locks over her shoulder. "I was just wondering if you and Remus are dating, that's all."

Dora lifted her head and rested her chin on one thin hand, which was subsequently propped up on her knee. Her fingers tapped the side of her face as she regarded Lily thoughtfully, a very small hint of a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.

_She really is quite pretty,_ Lily thought as she looked over Dora in turn. _She's probably the only girl who could pull off being so bony and still look at least relatively healthy. Though it's a shame she's not nearly as graceful as she looks like she should be._

"Well…" said Dora slowly and secretively. Lily felt her eyes widen and she leaned forward eagerly.

_Why would Remus lie to me? I really thought he was my _friend_, _she thought resentfully for only a moment before she considered the fact that Remus might have wanted to keep it a secret. Perhaps Dora was more open about it now that Sirius was gone. Lily felt very proud of her ability to keep secrets just then, glad that Dora would trust her.

"…I'm afraid you're about to be very disappointed," continued the younger woman. "Remus and I aren't seeing each other."

_Aw, shit._

"You're _just friends?"_ she asked incredulously. She had never seen two friends so close as Dora and Remus.

"I…" Dora lifted one shoulder in a shrug and kept it there as an awkward smile flitted across her face. "I suppose that's what you could call it."

"What would _you_ call it?"

Dora opened her mouth, but no sound came out. "Uh…" Her puzzled look melted into a nervous giggle. "I guess 'just friends' is what I'm stuck with for the time being."

Lily laughed, tossing her hair over her shoulder again. Dora envied her.

_She's gorgeous,_ she thought. _She's got that dark sort of red hair instead of the obnoxious carrot color most redheads have got. And those eyes! I would kill for those eyes! I couldn't even morph them green and come anywhere close to as sparkly and expressive…_

"It's better than being 'sort of' James Potter's girlfriend," Lily confided in her. Dora blinked in confusion, and she continued to elaborate. "It's how James introduced me to his parents over Christmas. 'Mum, Dad, this is Lily. She's…sort of my girlfriend…_I guess_.'"

On the last two words she'd lowered her voice to an incredibly unladylike grunting sound, which reminded Dora strongly of James when he was muttering. Without warning the younger girl doubled over as she nearly burst out laughing at the uncanny impression, and Lily did start laughing moments after.

They spent the next fifteen minutes making loud troll-like "Ughh!" noises and beating each other over the head with Dora's pillows, laughing uproariously (on Lily's part, Dora was still only snorting or grinning) until Dora's dorm mates came into the room and looked at them like they were crazy. As Lily passed them on her way out (red-faced from both laughing so hard and being caught acting so un-Lily-like) they muttered 'lesbian lovers' to one another. Some things would never change.

Dora quickly whipped her bed hangings shut before Eva and her crew could turn on her, and so she could hide her accidentally-morphed dark red hair, freckles, green eyes, and incandescently happy grin. She fell asleep minutes later, still smiling into her pillow.

"She's not budging," Lily informed Sirius, James and Peter the next day at lunch. Dora and Remus were blissfully unaware of all around them as they ate their meal together a mere two feet away.

"Neither did Remus, even when we bugged him all night!" Sirius complained. "This is way too confusing! They look like they're dating, they act like they're dating, but whenever we ask if they're dating they say they're not dating!" With a frustrated groan, Sirius dropped his head onto the table, making an audible thudding noise. James sympathetically followed suit, and Peter, always the follower, did the same as well.

Lily heaved a long-suffering sigh before reaching out and pulling the boys into an upright position by either their hair or earlobes. "Come on you lot, get your heads in the game!" she scolded them. "We've got to figure out a way to get those two together!"

"Why do we have to do it? Can't we just let nature take its course?" whined James. Lily glowered at him, and he positively cowered.

"Because they're _obviously_ in love, James!" she reprimanded him bossily. "They're too damn shy to act on their feelings! Remus is worried that his _you-know-what_—"

"_Please_ Lily," scoffed James.

"Call it his furry little problem like the rest of us!" finished Sirius.

Lily continued as if there had been no interruption. "—is going to scare her off or end up with her getting hurt! And sweet little Dora is afraid of _everything_, rejection among them! Therefore we must act now if we ever want them to get together and be eternally happy!"

Sirius, Peter and James all blinked owlishly at her.

"What?" she bristled demandingly.

"You _really_ want to be the one responsible for getting them together, don't you?" chuckled Sirius.

"And what makes you think that, Sir Doctor Butthead?"

"You forgot the 'Esquire.'"

"Shut up Peter!"

"What I mean is," interrupted Sirius before Lily and Peter would do more than just glare at one another, "that someday, in a cozy little cottage in the forest with a warm fireplace crackling in the background merrily, you're going to take all of the sweet little Tonks-Lupin babies onto your lap and tell them all about how you're solely responsible for their existence. And you will enjoy every moment of their awed reverence of you, Lily, goddess of matchmaking!"

Lily was practically glowing at the very thought, gazing off into space. Just as James was beginning to chuckle she came back to herself. "You're crazy!" she admonished Sirius.

"Stupid slut!" retorted Sirius without thinking about who he was speaking to. Suddenly he found himself being punched in the kidneys from both sides (this was not a good day for Sirius to decide to sit _between_ Lily and James). His cry of agony as he fell to the floor and started writhing around (a bit melodramatically, but that was just his personality) was finally enough to snap Remus and Dora out of their happy 'ignorance-is-bliss' attitude.

"Sirius, what _are_ you doing on the floor?" asked Dora confusedly.

Sirius, thinking quickly, found the words spilling from his lips before he even felt the thought go from his brain to his mouth. "Creating a clever diversion; _grab 'em_!"

Proving that great minds truly think alike, James, Lily, and Peter used their combined efforts to grab Remus and Dora and wrest them out of the Great Hall. Ignoring the young couple-to-be's protests, Sirius quickly (but still slightly hunched from the pain in his kidneys) ran to the nearest cleaning cupboard's door and opened it up. James, Peter, and Lily threw Remus and Dora inside and then slammed the door on the shouting youngsters, locking it liberally against any sort of magical unlocking attempt.

"That should do it," said Sirius approvingly. "Good work gents. And Lily. And Peter."

"Hey!"

"Oh shut up, Pete, you know I'm only joking." Sirius then raised his voice and banged on the door where Remus and Dora were still yelling furiously to be let out. "Pay attention you two; we'll be letting you out in time for dinner! See you later!"

Listening to their mates' laughter fade, Remus and Dora resigned themselves to sitting on old water buckets to simply wait it out.

"Godric's balls, man, what did we do to deserve this?" groaned Dora after about five minutes of silence, in which she had fidgeted restlessly and made several huffing sounds.

"I think it has something to do with our interrogations last night," Remus decided with a solemn nod. "Our friends weren't quite satisfied with the answer they got."

"Well that's just cocked up," sniffed Dora disdainfully. She crossed her arms over her chest and scowled at the dark broom cupboard.

"That's true," agreed Remus without hesitation, before silence reigned again. After another minutes of impatient huffing, Dora finally leapt to her feet.

"Alright, time to go!" she exclaimed loudly (reminding Remus very strongly of Sirius in a rare moment of down-time), unsheathing her wand from the waistband of her jeans. He blinked at her mildly.

"And how do you propose we get out? The door's warded against magic." Dora cursed, scowled at the door for a moment and, much to Remus's surprise, suddenly smirked.

"We don't need a door," she said dazedly, with realization dawning on her face. Remus stood up cautiously, wondering if she knew something she didn't know he also knew. Sure enough, she reached back and rapped her wand on the back wall of the cupboard sharply. The door slid obediently to the side, revealing a narrow winding staircase. Remus felt his eyebrows lift up gently; this passage wasn't even on the Map.

"Come on!" prodded Dora, already two paces up the stairs while Remus stared after her languorously. He then shook himself mentally and followed her up.

The stairs came out at the roof of an unidentifiable part of the castle, but that wasn't what made it special; it was a garden too. There were all sorts of Muggle and Magical flowers and plants around them, along with three small, magically maintained, artificial ponds scattered about. The air was comfortably thick with the scents of the flowers combining into the perfect perfume.

"So, here it is: Dora Tonks's secret place number three," Dora announced, hands on her hips as she peacefully surveyed the garden.

"…Which isn't much of a secret, sorry, but I've known about this place since third year."

Dora scowled again, but only slightly. "Perfect. The one time I think I have a place all my own, the Marauders have known about it for four years already."

Remus let a calm smile grace his features as he tilted a head at her. "Wrong-o. 'The Marauders' don't know about this place at all. 'Remus Lupin' does."

She blinked at him slowly, trying to register the fact that the Marauders were not, in fact, operating on one massive conjoined brain, and were capable of keeping secrets from one another. "This may sound a little ludicrous, but why didn't you tell your friends about it?"

A muscle jumped in Remus's jaw, and Dora knew that she had brushed a nerve, if not touching one fully. "I'm sorry; you don't have to answer me if you don't want to."

"It's alright," amended Remus immediately. "I just…I don't talk about it a lot…Sirius is the only one who really gets it, and he's always wrapped up in his and James's private little world…I come here to think about my mother."

Neither Dora nor Remus expected the gasp of "Oh, Remus," that tore through Dora's throat before she could think about it for even a moment, and they jumped. She turned bright red and turned away from him quickly. He touched her shoulder to show that is was alright, but she didn't turn back right away; she hated when people pitied her, and therefore hated herself for pitying him.

And what was worse was, now that she has begun, she couldn't stop the question from tumbling from her lips. "Why would you come somewhere so beautiful to think about such an ugly, hateful person?" She turned back to him with confused eyes that also pleaded that he know he didn't have to answer.

He smiled at her again, and then wandered over to one of the little pools to sit down, plucking out a small, beautiful, fragile-looking flower from its edge. He looked up at Dora over his shoulder, comparing the purple flower petals to her purple hair, and unable to fight a smile as he realized that if there were ever a Dora-flower this would be it.

"I guess it's sort of like…when you were little; you thought your mum was the prettiest person in the whole world, right? That's why I only come here to think about my mum; because the beauty that you could only see in your mum as a small child is the only way I could ever describe it." His smile faded, and he turned back to the pool to drop the delicate flower into its depths.

Dora slowly lowered herself down beside Remus, and then sidled closer so that their shoulders were just barely touching.

"And now I have this beauty to take her place."

Dora felt her heart wrench painfully for Remus. She made a move as if she were going to grab his hand, but then appeared to change her mind at the last moment and ran her hand through her hair. He seemed satisfied with her company by itself.

Coincidentally forgetting that they had been trying to escape the broom cupboard to join their friends again, Remus and Dora contented themselves with letting the night come and watching the stars appear, one by one, until they both drifted off to sleep.


	9. Chapter 8

I am a thirteen year old German exchange student, starting my third year at Hogwarts

A week after Dora awoke on the sofa in the Common Room, unsure of how she'd gotten there when she'd fallen asleep on the roof of the castle; Remus found himself walking along the edge of the Forbidden Forest with Sirius. It had been one of those rare days that James wished to be alone with Lily for a while, and Peter and Dora had a lot of studying to do, so Padfoot and Moony found themselves with some uncommon time together.

"So Remus, can I ask you something, one canine to another?" asked Sirius abruptly. They both stopped in their tracks in order to face one another while they spoke; this sounded truly serious.

"Yeah mate, go ahead," Remus said quickly. Sirius dug his hands deeper into his pockets, scuffing at the ground with the toe of his shoe. It was quite the phenomenon; Sirius had never been one to be lost for words or to hesitate when he wanted answers.

"When are you going to tell Dora about your furry little problem?" The words tumbled out in a rush, and Sirius immediately relaxed now that he had said what he wanted. He adopted his laid back and easygoing attitude once again while it was Remus's turn to inspect his shoes.

"I don't see why I should tell her any time soon, if that's what you mean, Padfoot," Remus said quietly. He peered up at his friend to see that Sirius looked disgruntled, maybe even angry with him. "What? I just don't think there's a good enough reason to tell her after only knowing her for a month!"

"Month and a half."

"Whatever! Just give me a good reason and I'll think about considering it…a little bit."

Sirius raised one naturally perfectly-shaped, critical eyebrow at him. "_Well_…" he started slowly and deliberately. "Maybe, _just maybe_, it's because you are bang-up, crazy-eyed, slack-jawed, _allow_-her-to-cut-off-your-testicles-and-make-a-charm-necklace-out-of-them-because-it-would-match-her-eyes _in love with her,_ _you_ _daft bastard!_"

Remus had opened his mouth to give either a sharp or witty retort when an odd rustling sound in the leaves behind them. They both whipped around, hands already reaching for their wand pockets—it was unusual for any sort of creatures to wander this close to the tree line—but by the time either of them had drawn a wand, whatever had been there quickly retreated back into the shadows of the trees.

They quickly dismissed the incident—and Sirius's outburst—from their minds, and instead spent a good three hours simply goofing off and getting into an impromptu wrestling match beside the lake. Remus won, not really to Sirius's surprise (but surprising to everyone else, as Remus was always hiding in books instead of wrestling), and then they headed up to the castle to check up on Peter and Dora, in Remus's case, or to interrupt a perfectly good snog between James and Lily in Sirius's case.

Another week passed by in NEWT preparation for the Marauders and Lily, and the weather continued to grow more sultry by the minute, sufficiently distracting everyone fifteen and over from their critical studies. Dora seemed to be getting less likely to fall into depression every time she looked at Remus and smiled in a way that made him warm from the inside out. It was only at the end of the week that he realized he had never heard Dora laugh. Upon asking the others, they recalled incidents in which she almost started laughing or gave a small chuckle, but had never truly laughed. They made it their new mission to do so.

Unable to get access to some of the Restricted Section's essential books for their NEWTs, the Marauders and Lily went up to the Room of Requirement with Dora in tow. Despite the radiant smiles she sent Remus whenever they made eye contact for longer than just a second, she had seemed a bit lonely and pensive for the last few days, and Remus didn't want to leave her all alone in her dorm with those other awful girls. They were all sprawled across the thick rug in front of the massively cozy hearth, open books spread around them. They studied erratically, reading one book until it bored them and then switching, or occasionally losing focus and throwing cushions at each others' heads.

After one such incident, with everyone red-faced and gasping for breath as the girls tried to straighten out their newly mussed hair, Dora asked a question that sent everyone into an awkward silence.

"So, where do you lot's nicknames come from, anyway?"

The Marauders shared a shocked glance; no one had ever asked them about their nicknames before. Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs had simply surfaced overnight, and they were so popular by then that no one had ever questioned it. They had never thought to come up with a cover story because of their own confidence. Lily sent James a significantly wide-eyed look, silently asking 'what are you going to do?'

After two solid minutes of silence, Dora positively scowled at them and asked in a dark voice "Or does that have to do with Remus's ill relatives as well?"

Another shocked silence ensued, and Remus frantically fished around in his mind for an answer to give her. The longer they made her wait, the darker Dora's eyes grew. She was sincerely getting annoyed with them.

"Dora is everything okay?" he asked with genuine concern evident. "You seem to be a little…_off_…tonight."

Dora made an impatient 'tuh' noise with her teeth and snapped her book shut, rolling her eyes. "Don't try to change the subject, Remus. I refrained from asking you questions before, but every time I bring up anything to do with your erratic disappearances you stutter about ill relatives and I can literally _see_ the lies in your eyes, and it makes me feel sick and untrustworthy!"

Remus sat up, his face falling quickly from the content expression it had been in five minutes ago. Dora also pushed herself up to her knees on the floor, never moving from his gaze.

"It's…complicated, Dora…"

"What's so complicated about it?" she interrupted. Her voice grew bleak as she added a moment later: "Remus, don't you trust me?"

Remus was horrified to see that she wasn't asking to make him feel guilty; she was actually afraid that he didn't trust her. He flew up to his knees and immediately felt the horror cross his features. "Dora, of course I trust you!"

"What a preposterous thing to say, Dora!" Lily interjected. James touched her hand to signal to her not to interfere. This was between Dora and Remus, and they all knew that.

"Dora, I do trust you, I would have never…done what we did…if I didn't trust you infallibly."

"Then why can't you trust me with this if you can trust me enough to show me your scars?" An O of realization suddenly dawned on her face. "It has to do with the scars too, doesn't it?"

Remus felt his face go pale, but he refused to let his distress show and instead focused on getting Dora in a better mood. He would have to tell her about his lycanthropy soon, and he didn't want it to happen because he had gotten carried away with his feelings. He refused to let his condition be a landmark of the end of their friendship (or whatever his and Dora's odd relationship was), rather than merely an obstacle to overcome.

"What…do you mean?" he asked lightly. "It just so happened that I got the scars while my aunt was ill and I was attacked by feral dogs. So what?"

"You _know_ what I mean, Remus," snapped Dora. She closed her eyes for a moment as if she were bracing herself for something unpleasant. "I mean the other scars, the older ones. The Great Sadness."

Remus felt his gut wrench at the final two words. He had been unconsciously referring to his lycanthropy-induced constant state of subconscious depression as the Great Sadness for the past several weeks. It was not something he discussed among even his father, let alone his friends and Dora.

"'Great Sadness'?" Remus heard Peter whisper behind his back. The Marauders had been firm in not reading Dora's diary entry that had been spread through the school or listening to rumors that had abounded from it. They must have shrugged, because he heard no other response.

He also felt a small twinge of annoyance; Dora of all people should know that he didn't like to speak of such things as openly as her blunt personality did. "Dora…I just don't think I'm ready to tell you everything yet. You'll just have to trust me to tell you."

"How can I trust you to tell me the truth if you obviously don't trust me!?"

"Dora, you already know I trust you! You're my-…my…" Remus floundered, still trying to find the right word to describe what, exactly, Dora was to him.

"If you trust me, then tell me the truth, Remus!" she loudly cried.

Remus knew it would be futile to argue the subject any further; the matter of their trust in one another would just make the conversation turn circles again and again until the end of time. He was unexpectedly frustrated, and just wanted this over with. He had never wanted anyone to know the truth so much in all his life.

"You want the truth?!" he demanded, leaping up to his feet angrily. Dora flinched away from him at the harsh sound of his voice as she shot to her feet, her face going pale; she had yet to see him this angry or upset. "Fine, here's the truth: LYCANTHROPY."

Dora's face went slack with shock; she obviously hadn't been expecting this. Her skin went even paler, if that were possible, then gray, then green, then an unpleasant mix of green and gray.

"You're a werewolf."

The words were no more than a whisper on her white lips. Peter and James were nearest to her, and quickly grabbed her arms to hold her up as she began to sway dangerously. Lily made a sympathetic noise in the back of her throat; she obviously was still remembering when she found out for herself and ended up having one of the most impressive anxiety attacks known to man the following full moon. She refused to stop treating him like a small child the day after the full moon until months afterward.

"Yes," Remus said back just as quietly, his anger spiraling down to horror at the fact that Dora had found out this way. He closed his eyes and waited for the sky to fall. Dora very carefully removed her arms from Peter and James's grip, blinking rapidly.

"I, uh…" She opened and closed her mouth several times, but no sound came out. "I, uh…I think I…need some time to, uh…mull this…over…" Still blinking rapidly, she turned around to walk through a door that had materialized out of nowhere. She opened it and gave them all a glimpse of the sixth year girls' dormitory before she slipped in, releasing a single sob just before the door shut and vanished.

Another shocked silence spread through the room like noxious gas. Remus stood, frozen, staring at the place where Dora had disappeared from. Lily still knelt on her knees behind him, her wide eyes saddened. Sirius was half-standing beside Lily, almost as if he intended to run after Dora and make her see sense. James and Peter, now in front of Remus, were staring at their empty hands. As one, they turned their gazes to him.

Remus clenched his hands into fists at his sides to keep them from shaking, and then turned to the wall on his right. "I require a cure to lycanthropy," he said through clenched teeth, not really meaning it. Lily gasped in shock as a table materialized out of nowhere, with a neat stack of books on top of them. Remus didn't even flinch as he moved over to the table and fingered the topmost book.

He wasn't surprised to see the same books his parents had spent a year obsessing over after he had been bitten. How many times had he seen his mother comb through this top book before she had finally slammed it shut, packed her bags, and walked away from them? How many nights had Remus woken up in the night to find his father hunched over the next book down, convinced that the dream he'd had of discovering the cure had been a sign?

Remus closed his long pale fingers around the book on top of the stack, barely glancing at the cover, and chucked it at the window. Lily yelped in surprise as she leapt to her feet. "_Remus!_"

"GOD DAMMIT!" Remus screamed as he took two of the enormous tomes into his hands and threw them in the opposite direction of the first. Sirius had to flatten himself on the floor to keep from being concussed. He grabbed the last book in the stack and used all of his strength to propel it into the fireplace. Embers and sparks flew out of the grate and singed his clothes, but he didn't care. Nothing mattered anymore. He had ruined everything.

"Moony, stop!" James cried as Remus dropped to his knees in front of the fire, too close to the burning embers to be considered safe, his head in his hands. James and Sirius nearly had to drag him away from the fireplace, as he had become so despondent it was likely he may fall into the fire.

"I've ruined everything," he said in a low voice, staring up at the ceiling.

"No you haven't," Peter said in a scolding voice. "Dora said she needs time to think about it; just give her time and she'll realize that everything's okay!"

"Or she could realize that she doesn't want to hang around with a werewolf."

"Sirius!" Lily gasped; shocked that Sirius would say such a thing.

"You want to give him false hope? Go ahead," argued Sirius with a hardened, disappointed edge to his voice. He was obviously upset with his cousin for hurting his best friend. "I, however, am going to make sure he's prepared for the worst, just in case." He and Lily glared at one another for a moment before Sirius hoisted Remus to his feet. "Come on mate, time for bed."

"James!" Lily whispered to her boyfriend as the Marauders began to file out of the room. James looked at her sympathetically for a moment before shaking his head. His obligation was to his friends tonight, not to his girlfriend. She sighed and let him go.

The next two weeks were the worst of Remus's life. He started having nightmares every night again, which hadn't happened since the Marauders had found out his secret, and with Lily after them. Every night was the same vision. Dora never wanted to see him again, and she told anyone who would listen (Severus Snape, most of the time) of his secret. Snape would then tell all of his Slytherin cronies, and they would tell everyone they knew and their parents, and soon there would be so many demands for his expulsion coming in that Dumbledore would have no choice but to dismiss him from the school. Remus would return home to his father's disappointment and his mother would be there, too, looking down at him and saying 'You see? The little monster really can't be trusted.'

Dora, on the other hand, was equally miserable. She was woken up every night with a cold glass of water from Eva, who was always complaining that she wouldn't stop tossing and turning and _positively moaning_ in her sleep. She would go to the Great Hall, see Remus sitting at Gryffindor table, and a part of her muscle memory would start moving toward him, then she would remember. He was mad at her, she was certain of it. She should have just let him tell her in his own way, and in his own time. Instead she had forced the truth out of him and now he hated her for it. She just knew it. She would be alone forever.

The day of the full moon came again, leaving both Remus and Dora feeling faintly ill, but for different reasons. Remus was worried that, with all of his emotional distress, he would accidentally mangle himself again, but not pull through this time. Dora, who had been doing extensive lycanthropy research (with the remaining two books in the library that hadn't mysteriously gone missing), was afraid that he would either kill himself or another animal in the Forest (where she assumed he transformed) would.

Remus, as usual, went through the secret tunnel to the Shrieking Shack an hour or two before moonrise, where he would wait for the lads to show up. Remus wouldn't let James or Peter come in until the moon had already risen. He would only allow Sirius to be with him during the transformation, for reasons only his deepest subconscious knew.

He was just starting to get antsy (moonrise was nearly half an hour away now) when he heard voices in the tunnel to the Whomping Willow. His brow furrowed; the lads usually didn't show up this far from moonrise. But then he heard one voice that wasn't familiar to this old creaky house, a high-pitched shaking voice that was riddled with fear. Dora.

Remus quickly stood up despite his aching joints, and pulled his robe tighter around himself with shaking hands. What the hell were they thinking, bringing Dora up here so close? He opened the door to the entranceway and was about to shout at them until he saw the trapdoor open and a bob of purple hair coming through. Sirius gave Dora a leg-up into the Shack, and then closed the door so she and Remus could have a few minutes' privacy.

Dora cleared her throat as she carefully fingered the buttons of her coat. Her eyes never left Remus's face, though.

"Umm…" was all Remus could say, scuffing at the floor with his shoe. Dora's face suddenly crumpled, and she launched forward to crush him in a hug. Remus let out a cough as the air left his lungs, and Dora quickly let go. "Did I hurt you?"

"Only a lot," Remus said in a reassuringly sarcastic voice, rubbing at his ribs. Dora bit her lip apologetically as blood flooded her face.

"I'm sorry, I've just been so worried all day," she said hurriedly, stumbling over her words in her haste to make him understand. "And you have to promise me that you won't get hurt this month because I don't think I'd be able to stand it if you did!"

Remus let out a small sigh and opened his arms, and Dora slid into his embrace with much more care than she had before. "Now that I'm not so worried about you hating me, and since I've got all of the lads with me this time, I probably won't get hurt," he assured her gently. "I'm going to be a little sore, and a little tired, but probably with only a few scratches."

He felt Dora relax against his chest slightly. "Okay," she breathed out. Almost instantly afterward she tensed again. Then, in a great rush, she said: "Remus I'm still afraid." Remus felt his eyes close, and he was about to release her, but she closed her arms around him tighter. "Not of you, I promise! I'm just…I'm just worried that someday…you're going to be hurt, and…maybe not get better again."

Remus felt his lips tighten as he gave Dora a squeeze; he could feel her shivering through her jacket. "And I can't promise you that that won't happen someday, Dora. I'm sorry."

He heard her sniff quietly just before she said "S'alright. You can't help it."

Remus had wanted to tighten his hold on her further, but was already aching and therefore let her go and stepped back. He smiled wanly at her, and she gave a weak shaky smile in return. "Run along now and get some sleep; I'll see you in the morning. I _will_ see you in the morning, right?"

"Yes, definitely!" Dora agreed immediately, making her way back to the trapdoor. Sirius and James helped her down again, and then crawled up into the house after she was gone.

"Good show, mate," said Sirius with a clap on the shoulder.

"Sorry we had to bring her here, but she was about to beat Lily for most impressive anxiety attack known to man," James apologized.

"S'alright," said Remus with a shrug, even though any other day he would have been very upset that they'd brought anyone to the Shack. "You can't help it."

They spent around fifteen minutes laughing and joking around or, in Sirius's case, pushing Peter into the empty fireplace while pretending to mistake him for a chimney sweep. Their fun should have gone on all night, but Remus suddenly went quiet and retreated into the other room. The other Marauders fell silent, knowing it was almost time. Sirius transformed and used his nose to open the door, which Remus had charmed against certain sounds. For the few seconds the door was open James and Peter flinched away from the sounds of their friend's sobbing.

Sirius-as-Padfoot trotted into the kitchen of the Shack and lowered himself to lie down beside Remus, who was curled up naked on the floor. Instantly, Remus buried his face in Sirius's shaggy fur and wound his fingers into it.

"It…h-h-hurts…" he cried. "Padfoot, help me!" Sirius closed his eyes and simply nudged Remus with his nose, knowing that if he were able to express the agony he felt on his friend's behalf without alarming said friend, he would be howling. James was too stiff and muscular to be very comforting to Remus, and Peter was too small. At least, this was why Sirius guessed it was always he who was allowed to see Remus transform.

His thoughts were interrupted by Remus's scream of agony that shook the kitchen windows. Sirius squeezed his eyes shut and waited.

Dora, meanwhile, was sitting awake with Lily in her Head Girl's dorm. Both girls were sitting in the window seat, one hand pressed up against the glass as they stared out toward the Shack. An unearthly scream of agony filled the air, the Shack's supposed ghosts, but they knew better. Dora started crying quietly as she imagined what Remus was going through. Lily wrapped her arm around her shoulders in a sisterly fashion.

All they could do now was wait.


	10. Chapter 9

I am a thirteen year old German exchange student, starting my third year at Hogwarts

Remus returned from the full moon very sore and tired, but otherwise unscathed for the most part. He still stopped in to the Hospital Wing so Madam Pomfrey knew that he was alright and wouldn't come looking for him. When he went through the door to the Common room he was instantly shushed by Lily, who was sitting on the sofa by the fireplace. He blinked at her in confusion, but then saw Dora. She was curled up on her side with her head in Lily's lap, and tear-stains on her cheeks.

"The poor thing was up crying half the night, worrying about you," she whispered as Remus came over to them. He knelt beside the sofa, and gently brushed Dora's hair from her face. She instantly began stirring and sat up, rubbing her face.

"Wasn't sleeping…" she muttered, then caught sight of Remus through her fingers. "Remus!" She got up off the couch and wrapped her cool thin arms around him, holding him there for what felt like a very long time with Lily watching.

"I'm alright, go back to sleep," he whispered to her, but she shook her head. He sighed and placed his chin on top of her head, looking around the common room with an unusual feeling of contentment spreading through him. How had he come to be so lucky? He had an unstoppable father who had never wavered in his faith in him. He had four amazing best friends in James, Sirius, Lily, and Peter. And, of course, he had his…well…his_ Dora_. Not to mention he was alive, even after all these years. But, there was no doubt that Remus would be the first of them all to die, and he would take it in stride. He was lucky, after all.

In the end, Remus tried pulling the whole "I'm going to bed anyway, so you might as well too!" trick, but it backfired. Somehow they ended up curled up in his bed side-by-side until Sirius whipped the curtains open and stared at them until they got up.

"Honestly, you two, you can't be apart for more than two seconds, can you?" asked Sirius at the breakfast table later in the morning. "I wake up, see something bright pink in the gap in Moony's hangings, and lo and behold my baby cousin and my best mate are curled up like two _very_ contented rabbits!" He took a vicious bite out of a breakfast sausage, juice splattering everywhere quite grotesquely. Dora and Remus both turned their gazes down to the table, blushing furiously.

"Really?" asked James.

"Contented rabbits, you say?" added Peter.

"You're _disgusting_," Lily said to them both, throwing a cinnamon roll at their heads. Strangely enough, she missed them both and instead hit Sirius in the middle of his forehead.

The entirety of Gryffindor Table fell silent as one (when they were quiet nearly half the racket in the Hall was gone), and turned their heads to stare in shock at one of Gryffindor's most popular. Their eyes remained trained on him as the cinnamon roll stuck to his head for one, two, three seconds, separated from his head with a squelching noise, and then landed right-side-up on his plate. A large shiny gob of glaze still stood out between his eyebrows noticeably.

Everyone waited with bated breath for some sort of explosion (Sirius and Lily had been voted during Peter's crazy phase of poll-taking most likely to kill one another before their seventh year ended, as they butted heads so frequently while vying for James's attention), and just when it seemed that Sirius's face could get no redder from embarrassment, a strange, foreign sound distracted them all. It was unfamiliar, yet wonderful to Remus, James, Sirius, Peter, and Lily to an extent that they forgot about their issues.

Dora was laughing.

No one had ever, in six years, heard her laugh before. It seemed that the past few weeks she had even been holding something back, but was finally able to break through that wall that was keeping her from showing her emotions to their full extent. Now she was holding her stomach and her mouth was wide open toward the ceiling. It was like music, or bells, to Remus, tears were streaming down her face, and he couldn't help laughing along with her. Slowly, even Sirius and Lily melted and joined in.

Interrupting their pleasant foray into oblivious bliss, the morning owl post came. The laughter abruptly stopped as Remus and Dora both received mail.

"_Fuck!_" exclaimed Remus as he read the contents of his letter, then dropped his forehead onto the table with a loud _'thunk!'_ Sirius didn't even look up from his toast.

"Your Da take your mum back, then?" he asked as he chewed.

"Of course he did, he always does!" complained Remus, though it was muffled against the wood of the table. "Jesus man, why's he got to be so lonely all the time? Can't he get a fucking dog or something?"

"You can't blame your dad for being lonely, Remus," Lily scolded him. "Isn't that right Dora? …Dora?" Everyone looked to Dora's seat, but she was no longer there. Remus leaned back in his seat to see Dora practically running from them, her shoulders curled forward in the same stance she had always walked with before she had tried to kill herself.

"What happened?" asked James, staring after her as well. Remus shook his head.

They saw Dora at lunch, and she looked a little dazed but otherwise back to her normal self. Though she refused to tell him what had caused her unusual mood swing, and they all let it pass off as nothing.

A week passed in such a perfect fashion that Remus began to suspect it was all a dream. Everyone was feeling content, even with the seventh years' NEWTs coming up. Sometimes Remus had the feeling that Dora was trying very hard to be cheerful, and he was grateful for her effort. He noticed a change with the way he looked at her, too. Even though to others she was clumsy and uncoordinated, every move she made looked like a dance to him. Candles didn't reflect off of her eyes, the candles lit themselves when she looked around a room. She smiled at him and he felt his heart stop for a few seconds before racing off like a cursed broomstick. He even talked Lily into bringing her camera downstairs one day, as if he were going to record her unnatural beauty for all to see and put it in the history books. She could do no wrong. And, just when Remus was about to take the dreaded leap past the line of friendship, the unthinkable happened.

Dora lost herself again.

As if someone had flipped a switch inside her mind, she withdrew into herself almost overnight. Her hair and eyes went black as midnight, and dark circles developed under her eyes. Sirius had passed her in the corridors after several days of not seeing her at all.

"Dora!" he shouted at her, but she only went pale, hunched her shoulders further, and quickened her pace away from them. They all sped up to a jog. "DORA!"

James, with his longer legs, managed to catch up to her and get a grip on her sleeve, but Dora yanked away with a snarl-like cry of _"Do not touch me!"_ before she ran away at full speed.

"Lupin!" McGonagall barked at him as class ended the next day. He shrugged at the lads before walking to her desk and raising his eyebrows expectantly at her.

"I would like to talk to you about Nymphadora's recent behavior, Mister Lupin," she elaborated, gesturing for Remus to sit down. He obediently sat. "I suppose you have an idea of the cause of her mood change over the past few days?"

Remus shook his head. "No Professor, she hasn't spoken to any of us in days, except to yell at James in the corridor when he tried to stop her." The Professor's mouth tightened into a thin line of distaste – always a bad sign. "Is something wrong?"

"Nymphadora's grades have dropped. Drastically. She was assigned an essay in every class and has failed to turn in a single one," explained McGonagall in clipped tones, but Remus (who knew her better than she was fully comfortable with) could see the concern in her eyes. "And it is very crucial that she focus on her studies with it being so close to the end of the year. I suppose that now, as you obviously can't reach her either, I'll have to have a word with her about things. I don't suppose you could get her to my office tonight?" Remus nodded. "Thank you Mister Lupin, please close the door behind you."

Remus nodded again, unsure of what else he could say, and made his way to the Gryffindor Common Room. He saw Dora in the window seat, curled up and gazing out at one of the first rainfalls of the season. He grabbed her shoulder tightly, scaring her so effectively she fell to the floor. She then pressed her back up against the seat, looking like a caged animal, and Remus felt his heart plummet.

"I'm not doing this as Remus, I'm doing it as a Prefect," he said with a hollow voice. "McGonagall wants to see you in her office tonight. You'd better be there, she was pretty angry."

And so Dora went, and spent over an hour imprisoned in McGonagall's office before she was allowed out. The next morning she at least made an effort to speak to him, which was a great relief. Whatever McGonagall had said, it had made some sort of impact.

"Erm…Dora, are you okay?" Peter asked. Dora's gaze snapped up to him from beneath her eyelashes.

"Everything's fine, Peter."

They could tell she was lying by the hardness of her voice and the steely glint in her eyes.

"Then why have you been so angry with us for nearly a week?" demanded Lily. She and Dora glared daggers at each other across the table for over a minute, and then Dora slammed her fork down onto the table. She hadn't even touched her food yet.

"You know what? Forget this," she spat in a high shaky voice before getting up and storming away. Remus watched her raise one trembling hand to run it through her hair before she left the Hall.

"What the hell is her problem?!" Lily loudly asked, her face red with distress. She didn't look mad, as much as concerned. "We didn't do anything to her, and she's so mad."

James, who always hated seeing Lily upset, rounded on Remus. "You know the girl better than us, you figure out what's going on," he snapped before wrapping an arm around Lily's shoulders and guiding her away.

Remus stared after them, and thought about Dora's behavior for the past week. It was as if she had never been friends with them at all.

_No, that's not it,_ he realized as he made his way to Gryffindor Common Room that night after dinner. Lily had fearfully informed him earlier that she'd heard Dora crying in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom.

_She's acting the same way she did the day she tried to kill herself._

He saw Dora across the room and practically ran at her, ignoring Sirius and Peter's questions of what the hell he was doing, grabbed her arm, and began pulling her toward to portrait hole. Everyone gaped at him as he half-dragged the struggling girl out.

"Let me go!" Dora shouted directly into his ear. She was slapping his hand with as much strength as she could muster, which wasn't much as she had hardly been eating for a week. Her black hair fell in her face as she tried to jerk herself out of his grasp, and he tightened his hold around her wrist. "_Let me go, you asshole!_"

_Well, at least she's talking to me again._

Remus opened the door to the Room of Requirement and flung Dora in before entering and closing the door. Dora collided with his chest in her haste to try to escape. She was still shouting so much her always-pale face was red.

"Dora, stop fighting me!" he shouted desperately, crushing her to him and not letting go even while she clawed at him with her fingernails. Thinking of something that might be able to at least shock her into silence, he thrust her into the shower that had shown up and turned on the water, soaking her within seconds. Sopping wet and shaking with either cold or anger, she finally fell silent.

"I'm sorry, but I would've never gotten you to listen with you screeching like that," panted Remus while he assessed the damage Dora had to done his neck with her nails. She, seeing this, turned red.

"You shouldn't have dragged me all the way here; I could have you charged for assault," she responded dully and without any meaning at all. She plodded out of the shower and dropped down to sit beside the roaring fireplace and dry off. Remus slowly followed her, not wanting to get too close in case she snapped again, but wanting to be close enough to stop her if she tried to run.

"Why have you been acting like this?" he asked quietly. Dora's thin fingers began to pick at the carpet, and she kept her eyes on her hands.

"Maybe it's because I hate you," she said in a hollow voice devoid of all emotion. "Maybe I never want to see any of you again. Maybe I realized that the idea of being around a werewolf disgusts me." Even though she was obviously lying, her words still stung.

"I know that you don't mean that; tell me the truth Dora," pleaded Remus. He reached out and his fingers just barely brushed hers when she flinched away as if burnt. She turned her head away from him, and when she spoke, her voce shook.

"I…I _can't_." She sounded truly conflicted as she dropped her face onto the knees she'd been hugging to her chest. Her hair was relatively dry now, and was beginning to curl delicately at the ends.

Without thinking, Remus took one of the curly wisps of hair between his fingers. "Please, Dora. You can tell me."

"But I _can't_," insisted Dora, pulling away from him and beginning to pace around the room. Remus let out a great sigh of frustration as he too stood up. As she passed him he took her shoulders in to his hands.

"Dora, we've been over this," he said firmly. "I trust you to tell me the truth, if you trust me to keep a level head about whatever it is you're keeping from us."

He forced her to keep looking him in the eye, and watched as her resolve slowly crumbled beneath the mention of trust. She abruptly sank down to the floor again and buried her face in her hands. He carefully lowered himself down behind her, putting his hands on her shoulders comfortingly. After a long time, she put her hands in her lap.

"I require my letters from the past week," she said in a hollow voice before reaching out to the small stack of parchment that had materialized beside her. She removed one letter that was from her parents and handed the rest to Remus. His eyes rested on the first and he felt his heart accelerate.

_Stay away from Remus Lupin._

"At first, I thought it was some besotted girl who thought we were a couple, so I ignored it," Dora said quietly as Remus put the first letter on the bottom of the stack and read the next. They all appeared to be written on grubby or used parchment that was splattered with mud.

_If you ever go near Remus Lupin again, I will kill him._

He moved that letter to the bottom and looked at the next, not realizing that he was reading each one faster and with more desperation.

_I will not only kill Remus Lupin, I will also kill all of your little friends._

Each letter got slightly longer.

_If you think I am lying, your other friends' names are James Potter, Sirius Black, Lily Evans, and Peter Pettigrew._

Remus's hands began to tremble; this person, whoever they were, had been watching them all for some time.

_I'm going to capture you all before I kill them. First I'll start with Lily, because she's the smallest besides you. Not to mention watching young James suffer will bring me great enjoyment._

Remus felt bile begin to rise in his throat at the thought of Lily and James suffering.

_After Lily I'll kill Peter, because everyone's always trying to protect him. He's easy prey; I could take him down within two minutes. I think Lily would put up a fight, and James would most likely try to kill me to avenge dear Lily's death. Sirius will be more of a challenge, because he has not only watched his best friends James die, but also Peter whom he's always been fond of, and Lily who he has never resolved his problems with._

Remus's hands began to shake as he moved to read the last letter. Before he could see it, however, Dora's hand had closed around his wrist. "Not that one." He lifted his eyes to Dora's to see that she was absolutely terrified.

"Why?" he whispered. She closed her eyes as she took the letters from his hand and threw them into the fire.

"It's all about how they would kill you," she said shakily. "It goes into great detail."

She crossed her arms and stared resolutely into the fire, and Remus took a moment to take in her appearance. She had the unhealthy look of a person who hadn't eaten or slept for several days, according to the dark circles under her eyes. Her shoulders were sagging as if there were a great amount of weight tied to them, and at least now Remus knew why. She's been horrified of losing them all for the past week, and most likely had been having nightmares as well. It was truly frightening to Remus, because she did look hauntingly like the day she'd tried to kill herself.

Without thinking, Remus raised his wand and uttered "_Accio Dora's potions._" What surprised him more was that no less than three phials of green potion—the same pain potion she had used the first time—flew from her pockets and into Remus's outstretched hand. She spun around as the weight in her pockets lessened and gaped at him with wide eyes. Remus closed his fingers firmly around the phials as he clenched his jaw against the lump in his throat. His eyes were burning.

"Dora, what is this?" he asked in a choked whisper. Tears were suddenly spilling from Dora's eyes as she clapped a hand to her mouth.

"Remus, I…I…"

"You what? You were just holding them for a friend?" demanded Remus, trying to vent his horror into anger. "How could you do this to us? To _me_?"

With a strangled sob, Dora leaned up against the wall beside the fireplace and held one hand over her overflowing eyes. "I just…I was scared, Remus! I thought that maybe…maybe they would leave you alone if I were…"

"What, _dead_?" Remus asked, shaking his head as even the thought of Dora dying made him want to curl up and stop existing. "None of us would be better off if you were dead, you should know that by now." He leaned against the wall beside her and wrapped and arm around her until she stopped crying.

"What am I supposed to do, Remus?" sniffed Dora after she had exhausted all of her tears and she remained shaking in his embrace. Remus tightened his hold on her and fought the urge to kiss her head.

"Well, if we stick together then it would be harder for whoever's stalking you to fight us, right?" asked Remus, his stomach tying itself in knots with nerves of what he was doing. Dora nodded silently. "Well then, it would be a real shame for us to be separated over Easter holidays next week, right?" Once again, Dora nodded. "Then come with me to my dad's house for the break."

"But they said that if I go near you—!"

"We'll be under adult supervision at all times, and besides, they probably don't even know where I live," Remus assured her quickly. "Please, Dora? I always go home on Easter, and wouldn't you feel better if you could keep an eye on me?"

Dora seemed to contemplate this for several moments before nodding silently. Remus suddenly realized that she must be exhausted from all the crying and stress of the past week, and the Room of Requirement provided a door to the Common Room. He led Dora through the door and gently prodded her until she went upstairs. He then proceeded to go to his own room, where Sirius, James and Peter were all waiting for him.

"She's okay now," he said, not wanting to worry them about the letter-writer for no reason. They all relaxed immediately and settled down for bed.

Remus, for the first time in years, had a nightmare about when he was bitten. When morning came he brushed it off as nothing, and went to meet Dora for breakfast.


	11. Chapter 10

I am a thirteen year old German exchange student, starting my third year at Hogwarts

The subsequent week leading up to the Easter holidays went by in the blink of an eye. All of the seventh years were beginning to feel the strain of the upcoming NEWTs, while Dora was helping them all as best she could by quizzing them over meals. Remus could tell that she was still getting very little sleep (and possibly having very vocal nightmares, judging by the dirty looks her dorm mates sent her in the corridors), but at least she was making effort to start smiling again. She had apologized to them all for being so cold and distant, but had also refrained from mentioning the threatening letters.

The first day of the Easter holiday finally came, and the Marauders, Lily and Dora all boarded the Hogwarts Express. The plan was that they would go their separate ways at King's Cross station, Remus and Dora would go to his house on the Tube, spend three days alone at Remus's place, and then everyone would come to his house for the rest of the holiday. Dora was both excited and anxious about spending three days in Remus's company; so far she'd mostly been around him in a group, and if she had been alone with him it was for only a few minutes.

On the train to King's Cross, as they'd both been losing sleep lately, Remus and Dora fell asleep. Remus was, as usual, leaning against the window and Dora had fallen against his shoulder after falling asleep. Sirius and James, with the usual evil glint in their eyes and despite Lily's protests of "Don't, it's mean," arranged Dora and Remus as if they were dolls and making them hug.

As Peter went to find the food cart, Sirius saw a particularly foxy Ravenclaw down the corridor, and James and Lily had Head duties, Dora and Remus were alone in the compartment, sound asleep, for at least an hour. Remus was the first to wake and, in the foggy place between waking and sleeping, felt something nice and warm and instinctively pulled it closer before dropping off again. Fifteen minutes later Dora woke, felt more rested and comforted than she had in many weeks, moved her arms slightly so the circulation wasn't cut off any more, then drifted off again as well.

Sirius and James returned to the compartment, saw that they had moved, and burst out laughing. Dora and Remus slowly opened their eyes, saw what they had done while they were asleep (not realizing that Sirius and James had done it), blushed horrendously and leaped away from one another. Dora felt cold without Remus's arms around her, and shivered slightly as she took Peter's spot. She and Remus avoided each other's eyes for the rest of the train ride.

"I've never been on the Tube before," Dora admitted after they had separated from the others at King's Cross. Remus smiled at her assuredly.

"It's fun, I promise," he said, leading the way. They navigated their way through the crowded streets to the nearest Tube station, Remus showed her how to get on fast enough so that the doors wouldn't close on them (a prospect that mildly horrified Dora), and then they took their seats. The rocking of the train would have normally made Dora tired, but she was pumped full of energy from her nap on the Express and anxiety of never having been to Remus's home before.

They arrived in the village of Bingley around five in the afternoon. It strongly reminded Dora of Hogsmeade: small, cozy, and full to the brim with friendly people (and the odd Town Loony, of course). As they made their way through the busy street, several stall owners shouted out greetings to Remus, to whom Dora was clinging in order not to be lost in the bustling crowd, and offering him things to take home to his father in exchange for services of which Dora was not aware.

"So which one's yours?" asked Dora as she and Remus passed a clustered row of cottage-like houses. He smiled pleasantly and ignored in her inquiry, instead leading her into the vast stretch of forest across the cobbled street from the houses.

"Be wary in there, son!" amiably called a rosy-cheeked rotund vendor down the street. "Wouldn't want your girl to be gobbled up by the wolves we've been hearing the past weeks!" Remus furrowed his brow, but otherwise paid the man's warning no heed. He instead bent back a pine bough so it wouldn't swing back at Dora. She didn't notice a path anywhere near them, but made herself trust Remus's judgment, no matter how ominous some of the trees' shadows looked.

After possibly a half-hour of moving as quickly as Dora's uncoordinated feet could carry them, they came upon a large meadow, in which a southward facing dark gray brick house sat as if it had been there as long as the forest itself. The first floor was larger than the second, as a porch wrapped around the second floor instead of a roof over the first. All of the windows were circular, giving the house almost a gothic look. At the peak of the roof a weather vane was mounted, though from this distance Dora couldn't make out what it was. It definitely didn't look like a rooster or horse, though.

"You coming, or were you planning on just staring at it all night?" asked Remus cheerfully, already about five feet ahead of her. She quickly lurched forward and clutched his elbow between both of her hands. She wasn't afraid of Remus's home or anything, she was always anxious in new places no matter what. When she first got to Hogwarts she couldn't sleep for three weeks, though that could have also been because Eva and the others kept trying to dip her fingers in warm water.

"Welcome to Meadow House," Remus announced quietly (it felt like the sort of house that was always quiet, and their voices seemed to instinctively lower themselves) before opening the Westward facing door to a cozy small kitchen. The kitchen was dominated by a large table, a counter along the eastern wall with two sets of shelves for potion ingredients, and everyday imperishable foods. The southern wall housed an icebox, and the northern wall held four closely-packed doors.

"That one's Dad's room," Remus whispered, indicating the door closest to them. "That's the stairs to my room, that's the bathroom, and that last one's the sitting room." Dora nodded to show she understood.

"Welcome home," a mild woman's voice said. Remus and Dora shifted their attention to a small woman with brown hair and light hazel eyes emerging from beside the icebox. She'd been so quiet they'd hardly noticed them. Her face was oddly pinched-looking, with her small mouth and pointed nose.

"Mum," greeted Remus awkwardly. Dora just barely caught the movement of Remus wiping off his damp palms on his jeans.

Remus's mother smiled—a small, wry thing that would have been charming had Dora not known who she was—and nodded toward Dora. "Aren't you going to introduce me, Remus?"

With an awkward clearing of his throat and a small defeated sigh, Remus gestured from "Dora Tonks," to "Elaine Lupin," quickly. Elaine and Dora shared an awkward nod as Elaine placed her mug of coffee onto the table; her every movement was slow and deliberate, as if she were afraid of making sudden movements.

Dora suddenly hated her irrationally; who was this woman to act in such a way around Remus? He wasn't some wild feral thing that had to be treated with caution at all costs! He was a boy, a regular ordinary boy just like all other boys, only with a disease that made people fear him. Who really cared if he could hurt people, if it was only one night a month and in an enclosed space? And what kind of mother feared her own child? Dora hated Elaine Lupin so very much; she was surprised her hair wasn't turning fiery red at this very moment.

"Uh…Mum?" Remus said after nearly a minute of silent people staring at one another across the table.

"Yes, Remus?"

"You, uh…you know I hate you, right?"

"I'm well aware."

"Okay then." Remus then tugged on Dora's sleeve so she would follow him out into the meadow. As soon as they were outside and away from prying ears, Remus apologized and told her that he had forgotten his mother had come home. Again. By the time that Dora assured him it was alright and she didn't mind, they had entered the lengthening shadows of the trees and settled themselves onto a few small boulders beside a stream.

After several minutes of meaningless chatter, Remus suddenly burst out "D'you know that you're the prettiest girl in Gryffindor?" Dora stared at him for a moment, and then burst out laughing. Remus temporarily forgot what he was talking about, so enthralled was he by the sound of her laughter.

"Remus, that's very flattering, but hardly true," she said, shaking her head as she continued to tremble with silent laughter.

"I-i-i-is so!" Remus stuttered nervously, turning redder by the second. Damn Sirius and his silly dares. He dug into one of his pockets for a few moments until he retrieved a folded up roll of parchment. "You remember Peter's poll-taking phase? He went around making up all sorts of multiple-choice questions and asking the Gryffindors for what answer they liked best."

"Yeah, I remember," Dora said, unsure of where this was going.

"Well, James wanted to get Lily something for her birthday, but forgot, so instead he asked Peter to take anonymous-looking pictures of three girls from Gryffindor and have people vote on the prettiest one. He assumed Lily would win, which just goes to show that you should always expect the unexpected." Without further ado, he unfolded the parchment and offered it to Dora. She took it in slightly trembling hands and examined it cautiously. Remus couldn't possibly mean…but could he?

Sure enough, there was a picture of Lily from last year, sitting with a wide grin on her face and her toes in the lake. Light was reflecting off the water and onto her face, making her shimmer brilliantly. The second photograph was of—Dora blanched—Eva. She was obviously trying to look sexy, but looked positively ridiculous with her back arched the wrong way in an attempt to make her average-sized breasts to look bigger. Photo-Eva kept tossing her hair and winking at the camera, taking away any good effect, though Dora had to admit that with the light falling on her from the window, she looked pretty good if she only looked for a few moments.

The third photo nearly made a lump rise in Dora's throat. It was her, on a day that she had chosen to have her hair black of brown (it was hard to tell because all of the photos were grayscale, which also made it harder to tell perfectly identify each girl). She was sitting at the window seat in the Gryffindor Common Room, her legs tucked neatly beneath her. The photograph's cycle started with photo-Dora staring acutely out the window, then, as if she heard something that indicated a camera going off, swung her head around until she was staring directly into the eyes of whoever held the photo. Then, slowly, a soft smile spread across her face that was shockingly radiant. Photo-Dora then turned back to the window, and the cycle started all over again.

Dora's eyes drifted down below the pictures to see numbers below each one, signifying the number of votes for each girl. Eva got 12 out of 70 votes. Dora had beaten Lily by only four votes.

Dora slowly lifted her eyes and looked at Remus. He was staring away from her (his face was still quite red, and everything looked much more colorful after staring at the grayscale photos for so long) into the stream, and light from the water was reflecting onto him just as it had Lily, but this time the light was gold. It appeared to seep right into his scars and fill him up with light until he was whole. He was so beautiful it genuinely made Dora want to cry.

"Thank you Remus," she said softly. He turned his attention to her and smiled.

"Thank James, really; it was his idea, and after it went out of his favor he said I should show you," he shrugged. "C'mon, we'd better get back to the house before dark." He gave her a hand up and they walked back to the house together, watching the shadows lengthen before they decided to race back once they were in the meadow's perimeter.

"Oh my god!"

"What's the big deal?"

"It's enormous!"

"It can't really help its size."

"Yeah, but this is…oh my god!"

"I know. Pretty hot, right?"

"…I actually want to say yes! It's _that_ big!"

Remus burst out laughing, realizing what direction this conversation appeared to be taking if someone had only caught the tail-end of it, and dropped down to sit on the bed. Dora lowered herself down beside him, chuckling a bit as well. She had had every reason to be shocked; Remus's bed was the biggest thing she'd ever seen in her life, having obviously been victimized by a Permanent Engorging Charm. It took up nearly half his room.

"Why _is_ it so big?" she asked after a moment. It was big enough that she could lay across it and still be comfortable. _And comfy,_ she thought.

"Well it's good for visitors," explained Remus, bouncing slightly. "When the guys would come over during the summer in my first year, even with a normal-sized bed there wasn't enough room for three cots in here, so my dad just made my bed bigger. It now comfortable holds one stretched out person who rolls around in their sleep, or around six or seven curled up adolescents." Dora let out a low appreciative whistle.

"Impressive."

"I know."

"So, your dad trusts you to be nearly seventeen and sleeping in the same bed as a girl?" asked Dora with one raised eyebrow.

Remus shrugged. "He hasn't said anything yet, so obviously he doesn't mind."

Dora shrugged as well and wrapped the afghan Remus offered around her shoulders. He took a quilt off the headboard and, both looking a little pink around the ears, they settled for the night on opposite ends of the bed.

Remus awoke from a very peaceful and contented sleep at around four in the morning to an unusual feeling of bouncing. He blinked, half-asleep, and turned his head to the other end of the bed to see Dora positively thrashing. And, once he was fully alert, he could hear her whimpering and crying too. Suddenly, for the first time in years, Remus wished his bed were smaller as he got his legs tangled in the blankets and tried to reach out for her but couldn't reach.

"Dora, Dora wake up!" he whispered as comfortingly as he could while also trying to untangle himself from his blanket. He was finally freed and ended up dragging himself to her and pulling her head into his lap. She awoke with a shuddering gasp, as if she'd been doused in icy water, and shot straight up, limbs tense and ready to fight. She struggled against him for a minute before he quickly crushed her to his chest.

"Dora, it's alright, it's alright, it's just me!" he whispered urgently, running a hand through her hair. All at once, she slumped against his shoulder and started weeping. Remus sighed with relief and reinforced his hold on her. After several minutes in which Dora was able to compose herself long enough to stop the tears, Remus asked "Do you want to tell me about it, or go back to sleep?"

Dora sniffed a burrowed her face further into Remus's neck. "He came for us," she whispered shakily. Remus felt his heart accelerate until its galloping became a dull roar in his ears.

"No one is coming for us, d'you hear me?" he fiercely whispered, his voice raw with anxiety and drowsiness, clutching her tighter in fear. He didn't want anything to ever happen to her, and therefore felt powerless against this anonymous stalker whom he had never seen before.

"You can't stop him coming for us, Remus," Dora whimpered; he could feel her shaking. "He knows we're together, I can feel it, and he's going to punish us."

Remus didn't know what to do. His hands began trembling, and he rested his cheek against the top of Dora's head as his eyes began to sting. He hated seeing her like this, hated everything about it. She shouldn't have to be afraid all the time. He wanted to run up to her, take her arms in his hands, lift her beautiful face to the sky, and kiss her until she smiled properly. He wanted her to dance like the nymph she was named after. He wanted her to scream with laughter like all the other girls did.

He may love her; he wasn't sure.

He was reminded of the time last summer when his father took him to the theater, and they saw the play Sweeney Todd. It was a horribly gruesome and dryly humorous show, but that wasn't why he'd thought of it now.

"Nothing's gonna harm you, not while I'm around," he half-whispered and half-sang. His voice was rough and shaky, but Dora went still in his arms. "Nothing's gonna harm you, no sir, not while I'm around." Dora gave a single watery chuckle and inched closer as Remus frantically tried to remember the rest of the words. "Demons are prowling everywhere, they won't come near, they won't dare; nothing's gonna harm you, not while I'm around."

After a few more lines Dora was asleep again, and Remus finally allowed himself to lie down beside her, arms encircling her shoulders protectively, and drop off again. They slept soundly through the rest of the night.

When Dora woke up, it was for three reasons. One: she was very, very warm with Remus's arms around her; Two: sunlight was streaming in from the Eastern window and into her face; Three: she felt eyes staring at her. She rubbed her eyes and turned her head to see John standing in the doorway, holding a mug of coffee in his hand and staring at them with a vaguely stern expression on his face. It was more like he was deliriously happy, but knew he was supposed to be looking stern and therefore acted thus.

"Nothing happened. Promise," she assured him in a whisper. He let out a small sigh, though Dora wasn't sure if it was because he was relieved or disappointed.

"I believe you," said John resignedly, before he nodded toward Remus. "Let him sleep a little while longer; I haven't seen him look so relaxed in years." She nodded, and he smiled before he left.

And so it went on in that vein for the next several days. Remus and Dora would spend most of their time outside, enjoying the weather, or wandering around the village. Once night began to fall they would get back to the house, have supper with Remus's parents, then go to sleep and hope Dora wouldn't be awoken by her nightmares again, which she was every night. After three days of this, Dora woke up in a different position than she had before. Instead of lying stretched across the foot of the bed, she was curled up in the middle of the bed, and it was a lot warmer than the morning before. It wasn't climate either; it was body heat. She opened her eyes and saw that the rest of the Marauders and Lily were scrunched up on the bed along with her and Remus.

"Alright, whose hand is on my arse?" Lily grumbled drowsily. There was a high nervous giggle from one end of the bed, a sharp squeal of pain, and then a thud as Peter hit the floor, victimized by Lily's foot. At nearly the same time Dora became aware of three fingers that were resting against the side of her breast.

"Sirius, if that's your hand I think I'm going to puke," she said before turning her head. Remus turned bright red and withdrew his hand, which had apparently wandered in the course of the night.

After a few minutes of drowsy confusion, everyone was up and dressed and shuffling down the stairs to the kitchen, mostly without incident (Sirius bonked his head on the trapdoor going from Remus's room to the stairs). Dora ran a hand through her hair, making it even messier than it had been in sleep, and instantly it turned a bright fiery red as the door opened and no less than a dozen voices shouted:

"SURPRISE!"

A huge banner was strung across the ceiling of the kitchen (in which all of their parents were standing, except for the Blacks who were party-poopers), which read "HAPPY 17th BIRTHDAY, REMUS!"

"Well imagine that," said Remus dryly. "I forgot my own birthday."

Lily and Dora, who had never been absolutely sure about when Remus's birthday was, turned to gape at him. They subsequently burst out laughing. The rest of them followed, and then let the party begin.


	12. Chapter 11

I am a thirteen year old German exchange student, starting my third year at Hogwarts

With the combined efforts of Mrs. Potter, Mrs. Pettigrew, and Mrs. Evans, four two-foot high stacks of chocolate chip pancakes had soon been constructed on the kitchen table. As a last-touch, John stabbed Remus's small stack with a candle and lit it, and they all sang happy birthday.

"It's time for your birthday spanking, Moony!" James shouted with far too much excitement than should be allowed, pulling Remus to his feet. Sirius visibly perked up, his hungry eyes scanning the kitchen until he found his target. Then he grinned maniacally.

"Dora! Get over here and commence the birthday spanking!" he barked sharply. Abruptly the room fell silent as every pair of eyes turned to the bright red beacon that was Dora Tonks. She threw a syrup-covered pancake at her cousin's head.

"Ignore him, he's delusional," she muttered, though her tomato-face took away the impressiveness of her rebellion. She and Remus exchanged a glance, then turned away quickly and changed the subject.

"So tell me more about werewolves," she deadpanned. Elaine, sitting at the table near them, instantly stiffened and slowly made her way to engage Mrs. Evans in tight-lipped conversation. Remus watched them for a moment until a border-line evil mischievous twinkle formed in his eye.

"Well, the contagious venom of a Lycanthrope is _very _finicky," he said in an overly-serious tone. James, Sirius, and Peter tuned in and instantly their faces lit up with excitement. James whispered something into a confused Lily's ear, and she covered her mouth with her hand in both shock and amusement. Remus reached out and warmly patted her shoulder. "Sometimes," he continued, tapping Sirius and James on their wrists, "a bit of Lycanthropy," he tapped Peter's forearm, before turning to Dora, "can be spread," he enfolded her entire hand in his large one as he said: "through touch."

Dora got the joke instantly, especially now that Elaine was listening with an alarming attentiveness. She could almost hear the subtle Appearance Charms working on the others' faces, and she smirked on the inside at the fact that she didn't need them. She focused for a few moments, until she felt the vibrating thrum of spellwork left her ears, and then turned to grin at Remus's mother with golden eyes and two rows of extra long razor-sharp teeth. She didn't have to look at the others to know they had a similar turnout in their appearances, though she may have also caught elongated whiskers on the boys' faces.

Elaine gave a bloodcurdling scream, sprinted to the bedroom, and locked the door behind her. Everyone had fallen silent in the initial shock of seeing their children transformed into human-wolf hybrids, but once the Appearance Charms wore off, that all started laughing nervously.

"Elaine, dear, come on out, it was only a little joke!" called Mrs. Potter through bouts of giggles.

There was no response from inside, and Remus got up from the table. He tapped the doorknob with his wand, slipped inside the bedroom, and didn't come out for quite a while. No one took much notice of Remus or Elaine's absence for too long, still caught up in the excitement brought on by an all-day surprise party. They quickly struck up conversations across the room, and once again the room was filled with happy chatter.

"Sirius."

Sirius turned and saw Andromeda standing behind him, looking a bit hesitant but also smiling. He instantly felt his face fall from its previous grin, the circumstances under which he and his favorite cousin met still fresh in his memory. Guilt and blood flooded his face. "Andromeda, I—"

"There's no need, Sirius," said Andromeda, holding up a hand to halt the flow of apologies that would surely burst forth if he continued. Dora wandered over and casually folded her mother's arms around her neck, so that Andromeda was hugging her from behind. Heads stacked like a very short totem pole, they grinned at Sirius. Their resemblance to one another was shocking. "Dora's told me everything you've done for her the past three months."

Sirius felt a relieved sigh escape him, and he stepped forward and took his cousins into his own arms. "I'll be sorry for what I did to you for the rest of my days, Dora," he spoke with a tight, constricted voice. There were two heavy thuds as Peter and James, seeing potential for a massive group hug from across the room, joined in the embrace. Dora gave a nervous giggle from where she was situated; she was being squished from all sides.

Years later, Dora would still not be able to fathom how the next events took place. Somehow, both Remus and his mother had slipped out of the bedroom unnoticed. Outside the bedroom door, they parted ways for the last time. After Elaine slipped, unseen, out the door with a shrunken suitcase clutched in her fist, Remus made a great show of sneezing and rubbing at his eyes in what they all believed was a valid excuse for how suddenly red and damp they were.

No one really noticed Elaine's absence as the day grew older. The fun and games halted only for lunch and dinner. Around six, when the alcoholic beverages started being passed around to the seventeen-and-overs (Remus snuck Dora a Firewhiskey earlier, as she was the only guest present under 17), the kids gathered in the magically enlarged sitting room so Remus could open his gifts.

His father had given him the customary gift of a watch. It was pre-owned white gold (that resembled silver, ironically enough), and instead of stars and planets, the phases of the moon ticked serenely around the edge of the watch face. James, or as the card said "the Potters," had somehow scrounged up another two-way set of mirrors. James, courteous as always, had decorated the second mirror with hearts, polka dots, stars, flowers, and a label that neatly read "Property of Dora Tonks." Remus had rolled his eyes at James's antics, but then handed the second mirror over to a blushing Dora. He had gotten the biggest pile of sweets imaginable from Peter, leaving him in a state of shocked ecstasy for several minutes. From Sirius, he got a new black cloak with a silver clasp that had been gilded with gold (so the silver wouldn't sear into his flesh and kill him), and the gold had an ornate _M_ engraved into it, so the silver shone through. Lily had given him a potions book that was filled with all sorts of potions that were easy to make and would help with the aches and pains of the day after a full moon. When asked by Sirius about her gift, Dora went very red indeed, and slowly took a few steps toward Remus.

Her face was about four inches from his, and his mind had begun screaming 'oh my god she's going to kiss me!' when his father burst in and demanded "Remus, where the hell is your mother?"

Remus and Dora stepped away from one another with an eerie calm, if not a bit of disappointment. Remus slowly explained that his mother had left to run an errand, though in a voice that was heavy with implications toward some other clarification. A strange mix of emotions crossed John's face as he appeared to decipher his son's code, and he finally nodded. As he turned back to the door he called "carry on," loftily over his shoulder. Sirius, Peter, and James snorted at the appalled looks on Lily, Remus, and Dora's faces.

"Erm…anyone care to go outside?" Remus suggested after a few moments of awkward silence. They all gave quiet consent (except for Sirius and James and Peter, who were still sniggering) and made their way to grab their cloaks. Remus wore the new one Sirius gave him, and discovered that the pockets were mysteriously full of coins and a note that said '_You'll have to start somewhere, mate. Happy birthday._' He punched Sirius gruffly on the shoulder, but ran up to his room to quickly deposit the money into a box he'd been using to save up from under his bed.

On their way outside, John took Remus's arm and said something to him in a low voice. Remus nodded solemnly, and once they were outside quietly warned them all to stay out of the forest. Dora felt something tense up inside of her, and felt her hands start shaking at her sides as she realized that her wand wasn't with her. And, looking around at the others in the falling twilight, she noticed none of them were armed either, a known fatal mistake to too many in this war. She instinctively knew that this forest, with its ethereal peace in the day and ominous shadows at night, was where Remus became a werewolf. The forest's boundaries must be respected.

"Lighten up, Dora!" said Sirius in a warning voice, running up to his cousin and hoisting her up over his shoulder. She shrieked with surprise and started laughing as she was carried around the clearing. A distant echo of laughter told her that their parents were watching from the house, at least fifty meters away.

"Dora certainly looks happy," John commented mildly as he watched his son run in circles around Sirius, poking at Dora's sides. The girl's father positively beamed at him.

"Your son and his friends seem to have worked a miracle," he said, taking a sip of his wine as his eyes drifted to his daughter. She had somehow freed herself of her cousin's clutches, and was now morphing herself to look like Lily's mirror image. The older girl was giggling nervously.

John nodded and smiled. "I hope you don't find this a bit intrusive, but Remus told me about Dora's…incident…a few months ago." Ted's eyes became emotionally tightened, but he still smiled a bit and nodded encouragingly. "I'm very glad to see she's getting better. Remus seemed very concerned."

"James and Sirius wrote us as well about it," said Mister Potter, overhearing their conversation and politely joining in. "And I believe the Evanses heard as well; the wife and I have been making an effort to get to know them since the kids are dating."

"Oh, goodness; Peter, be careful!" called Mrs. Pettigrew, watching James tackle her son to the ground. She wrung her hands in her lap, fiddling with the ring around her finger. Peter ignored her and continued to wrestle James until he was defeated. The group decided to move along a bit further, and Dora dawdled until she was two feet behind Remus at the back of the group. James and Lily were holding hands and leading the group while Sirius and Peter muttered amongst themselves and pointing at Lily, obviously planning some prank or another.

"John?" Mrs. Potter asked quietly. John turned his attention to her. Black hair drifted into her squinted hazel eyes from a wayward breeze, as she lifted her hand to shade the last light of twilight. She was staring into the trees a short way behind Dora. "Do you see something moving in the shadows?"

Showing much too much alarm on his face for this situation to be relatively safe, John stood and gazed out toward the trees. Simultaneously, Dora slowed to a halt and turned her head to stare into the forest, dangerously close to where the movements had been.

It was as if an alarm went off in John's head, and suddenly he found himself running, running, running as fast as his legs could carry him, toward his son and his son's friends._ "REMUS! REMUS, RUN_!" He couldn't stop screaming, and he couldn't stop seeing a giant monstrous thing that had taken his little son's hand into its enormous jaws just twelve years ago. Even now he felt like that much younger man, sprinting across the clearing and almost hallucinating that he was seeing Remus at five and alone instead of at seventeen and surrounded by friends.

Dora heard John's voice a moment after the others had already started running, Remus glancing back at her to make sure she was coming. Before she had a chance to even turn fully around, a large, claw-like hand closed around her throat, and an arm thick and strong as a python wound its way around her waist; she was held fast against a man who was solid as stone and reeked of sweat, dirt and, horrifically, blood.

John heard Dora's mother screaming as all of the parents leaped to their feet and began sprinting toward their children. He, recognizing the creature that held Dora, pulled out his wand and produced a shield that would hold them all back. They fought against it and raged at John for keeping them from protecting their children, but he blatantly ignored them.

"_Greyback_," gasped Mrs. Pettigrew as she began to sway with her horror, bulging watery eyes focused on only her son. The other parents turned toward her with terror, now able to recognize the man in the fading light. They remained silent, however, as Greyback opened his mouth to speak.

"You didn't heed my warning, did you pretty?" he breathed into her ear. Dora felt her breathing constrict and tears slipped from her eyes as the horrible voice she'd been hearing in her nightmares became real. "Well? _Answer me_." He began to shake her violently, his claw-like fingernails digging painfully into her throat.

She whimpered, choked, and finally cried: "No, I didn't!"

Remus felt as if his entire world had suddenly gone into slow-motion, and all of the pieces fell into place. This man, this _creature_, had been the _thing_ that had written those letters to Dora. Greyback had already ruined Remus's life once over, and now he was trying to destroy all of the shattered pieces he had worked so diligently to put back together.

"That's right, pretty, you didn't," whispered Greyback. "You disobeyed me, and tried to interfere with the raising of my child. You are just another thread attaching my only unfaithful child to your civilized world, and I would have liked nothing better than to see you untie that thread, but it appears that I will have to _break_ it, won't I?"

_Child_, Remus whispered in his mind. _Greyback calls the werewolves he's bitten his children._

Suddenly, Greyback's golden eyes were boring into Remus's. "You really are weak, aren't you, Remus?" he asked. "You could have been such a good child to me, Remus, but you let these _threads_ of yours make you so weakly _human_." His eyes burned into Lily, James, Sirius, and Peter with such intensity that Lily cringed into James, shivering.

"I'm stronger the way I am," Remus found himself saying before he had time to process the words. A sickening grin spread across Greyback's face as he pulled Dora tighter to him; her face was beginning to turn a sickening shade of maroon because her air was being cut off.

"Then prove it to me, Remus! Prove to me that you are strong of will and of heart and of sinew! Venture into the forest and save your sweet pretty Dora from the clutches of foul, evil, Fenrir Greyback! Prove your physical strength by defeating me, prove your strength of will by staying away from the forest until sunrise tomorrow, and prove your strength of heart by having Dora die at the hands of her _one true love,_ instead of mine." He had positively cackled the words about love, and his claws drew blood from her neck by the time he had finished.

"Why must I wait?" asked Remus desperately. Greyback's voice, though quiet, carried on the breeze all the way back to their parents.

"I want no _distractions_ tonight."

And with one last cold chuckle and a sob from Dora, Greyback dragged her backwards into the forest just as the sun sank below the horizon, and they were engulfed in darkness.

Five seconds passed before everyone started screaming.


	13. Chapter 12

I am a thirteen year old German exchange student, starting my third year at Hogwarts

Had any oblivious civilian come by the scene of the clearing just after twilight, they would have thought that someone had been murdered.

And, to the inhabitants of Meadow House, someone may as well have been.

Women were screaming, men were cursing and punching whatever was nearest, and Remus Lupin was staring blankly ahead with a deadened fog clouding his eyes.

Dora. She was gone. That bastard Greyback had taken her from him.

He had been so close; just a few more hours, and maybe they could have had something together. Something concrete, something that wasn't too much to be considered friends but not enough to be partners.

And now he had lost his chance. Dora would never truly be his.

She would never give him his birthday kiss.

He would never tell her just how much he needed her.

He would never tell her that he knew now; he knew _exactly_ what he felt for her.

And now he had lost her. His Dora.

"What's going to happen to my daughter?" demanded Andromeda. "Why does that…that…_thing_…not want any distractions with my daughter?!"

A scream permeated the air, coming from the forest. Lily started sobbing harder into James's neck. Mrs. Pettigrew had fainted. Ted Tonks turned to face Remus with grief-struck bloodshot eyes.

"Why Dora?" he asked, and they all could hear the rest of the question in their own minds. _Why not Remus or one of the others?_

There was only one answer Remus could think of. "Because I l-…because she means a lot to me. To all of us. She's the most vulnerable and the most easily scared."

"Why are we sitting here like a bunch of fools?" Lily's father asked loudly. "Why isn't anyone calling police or something?"

"Dad," croaked Lily, though she was still hidden in her boyfriend. "It's not that easy." She gulped slowly and raised her head to make her father understand. "Greyback is…a _monster_. If you disobey his terms, he knows of w-ways that he can…_d-damage you_…so that even if help finds you, your d-death will be…s-slow and…_lingering_…" She was lost again to her tears as James pulled her closer with an almost fearsome protectiveness.

"No one is going to die," he assured her thickly. He had arranged Lily in his arms so that she wouldn't see the fear and wetness of his eyes. "We'll follow Greyback's terms exactly, so he has no reason to hurt her. Everything'll be fine, you'll see."

"Spoken like a true future Auror, son," said John distractedly as he passed the couple. He quickly grasped Remus's upper arm in his hand and moved him as far from the forest as possible. The rest of the parents followed his example and managed to get a hold of their respective children, except for Peter, who took hold of his respective parent, and went inside.

Remus, when he would usually be reassured by the physical contact with his father, felt suddenly as if he was two inches tall. "Dad, I'm not an infant!" he snapped hoarsely, yanking his arm out of his father's grip and turning on his heel toward the forest again. No less than three pairs of arms restrained him around the chest and began to haul him toward the house. Remus felt as though he had been put under the Imperius Curse; he knew he had to go inside and wait but his body just wouldn't listen.

"LET ME GO! LET ME GO, I HAVE TO SAVE HER!"

The arms tightened around him until he couldn't breathe properly, and he was finally forced to relax a bit.

"Remus, you _know_ that running in there full-tilt will only kill her faster," reasoned his father as Remus felt his muscles straining again.

"Faster," panted Remus, feeling the blood draining from his face. "Kill her…faster…faster…she'll die…_faster_…" His body convulsed so violently that his father's fingernails ripped small holes into the thin material of his shirt, and he couldn't fight the screams in his throat. "NO! DORA! DORA!"

"_Remus!_" a faint voice called from the forest. "_Remus, help! Help me!_"

Remus screamed, and was only faintly aware of the sudden rush of warmth coming from the kitchen until he was staring at the wooden door instead of the forest. He broke free of the others and clawed at the door, unaware of the hot tears streaming down his face.

A jet of cold water hit him in the face, and when that failed to calm him, a hand made hard shocking contact with the side of his face. When he had managed to face forward again from the backlash, a pair of reassuring hands held his head in place at the hinge of his jaw, and slowly Sirius's face came into view. "Pull yourself together, man!" he bracingly said, shaking Remus gently. "D'you really think Dora would like seeing _you_, the _calm one_ of all people, like _this_ in her absence?"

Very slowly, Remus shook his head and began to slide down the door toward the kitchen tile, but Sirius grasped his arms before he could collapse and hauled him into a chair. "Besides that, you're freaking Lily out, mate," added Sirius as an afterthought. Sure enough, when he looked he saw Lily clutching to James's shirt in the corner of the tiny kitchen. James was speaking to her quietly and running his hand through her hair.

"You see? He's okay Lils. It's just that it's so close to the Moon, that's all…"

As if they were now suddenly more aware of the fact that their youngest daughter was consorting with a teenage werewolf, the Evanses quietly suggested that they take Lily home.

"James, Sirius, perhaps we should also…" James's father trailed off in reaction to the mutinous looks on their faces.

"If you think we're leaving at a time like this—"

"—then you're crazy."

James and Sirius didn't even take their usual moment of giggling after finishing one another's sentences. It was truly a somber moment.

"Remus needs us whether or not he has the balls to admit it," argued Peter, even though his mother was still out cold and he had had to levitate her into the house.

"Dora's one of my best friends," Lily said stubbornly to her mother. "You lot should just clear out now if you're afraid of the Big Bad Wolf." Her eyes were blazing with a spurt of anger. The Potters and Evanses stared at her as if she had just sprouted tentacles, but she remained firm.

"Perhaps," John intervened calmly before all hell broke loose, "it would be safest for our numbers to be as little as possible. I don't mean to offend, but I think I am correct in believing that our friends the Evanses will be safer once they're as far from Greyback as possible."

"And what about our daughter? What about Lily?"

"I will personally make sure she gets home safely as soon as Dora is found," John assured Mrs. Evans. He held up a firm hand to stem the flow of protests that he had seen forming on Lily's lips. "That is my final word on this matter, Lily. The same goes for James, Sirius, and Peter; as soon as Dora is found you are to go home, understood?"

The boys nodded somberly and kept their eyes on the floor. Remus had finally gotten himself together, and was sitting with his pounding head resting on the heel of his hand. He wanted to close his eyes, but all he saw when he did was horrific images of what Greyback could possibly want the whole night for…

"Remus, we'll need you to…tell us a few things," said John carefully. Remus lifted his head; his eyes ached with the sudden light in comparison to his dark palm. He looked at his father questioningly. "…A few things that only a werewolf would know or fully be able to describe. To be safe."

Remus swallowed and coughed slightly when he realized he was swallowing air; his mouth and throat were dry as a bone. When he spoke, in was nothing more than the rasp of a man defeated; he sounded like he could be about fifty. He was all too aware that every eye was on him now (excluding Peter's mother).

"The…characteristics…of a werewolf on the day of the full moon have never really been researched," he began hoarsely. "However, despite these circumstances, I am obviously able to know what it's like. Constantly throughout a werewolf's life, from the day he or she is bitten, there is a…presence…in their mind. They haven't gone crazy or anything like that, it's not a voice or anything, it's just…_there_. And it's the Wolf; whether that's been researched or not I'm unsure, but I know it to be true."

He closed his eyes for a moment as he fought to regain control of himself. "Sometimes—usually depending on how close it is to the Moon—it's harder to fight back the Wolf. It's all a matter of mental strength and control. A sense of identity is also imperative. Having a sense of yourself, and who you truly are—" he fought a sickening wrench of disgust with himself, still remembering all the times Sirius or James had told him that only the man inside him mattered, and he had ignored them. "—are the key to being able to restrain the Wolf.

"The Wolf can never be fully repressed, despite certain myths about spells that will return a wolf back into its human shape (and works, but kills the human in the process). When you remain human, there is always a risk of turning. Turning Feral. The only time it's ninety-nine percent guaranteed that you will not turn, is if you've already turned Feral, and you're speaking of turning back to your old self.

"In order to turn Feral, you see, you have to fully embrace the Wolf. You surrender everything that makes you human and sane, sacrifice yourself, and allow the Wolf to fill in the gaps that your human mind left behind when the Wolf devoured it. By then, you're a lost case, no better than Greyback's minions."

He took another moment to close his eyes. He took in a slow breath and continued.

"However, for some reason that I cannot fathom, on the day of the full moon I am able to take in the strength and agility of the Wolf without running the risk of turning Feral. I'll be stronger, faster, my senses will be heightened a hundredfold…"

A thought occurred to Remus, and he went quiet and tapped his chin attentively. He felt a large hand come to rest on his shoulder, and brought his own hand up to cover his father's. John's voice, coming from near his left ear, said: "I know what you're thinking Remus; absolutely not."

Anger surged through Remus's chest in one fiery swoop, and it scared him; he had always fought to be calm and knew that everything his father had done for the past twelve years had been primarily for his safety and well-being, but he felt that he was about two inches tall whenever his father did it lately. Maybe he wanted to take a risk. Maybe he _wanted_ to compromise his safety. Maybe it was time to cut the proverbial apron strings.

"I am seventeen years old, dad," he said tightly. "I can make decisions for myself."

"You have been seventeen years old for approximately twenty hours, young man; if you think that I will let you make such a _foolhardy_ first adult decision, you have another thing coming to you," John argued, his voice steadily rising as color began to show on his face.

"What's going on?" asked Andromeda from beside the sink.

"My son wishes to go on a suicide mission," spat John, pushing himself to his full height and turning away from his son to hide the fear in his eyes. His hands, however, revealed his anxiety, as they trembled violently as he ran them through his hair.

"I do not see it as suicide if it brings Dora back safely," Remus retorted angrily. "Look, it's simple: I wait until exactly twenty-four hours before moonrise, allow myself to take in the powers of the Wolf, enter the forest, and distract Greyback long enough for Dora to get away. If she's injured in any way, I'll just have to try to find a way to subdue Greyback so I can—"

"No!" James shouted, impenetrable hurt and anger written on his handsome face.

"If you think even for one second that you're going to go out there _without us_—" Sirius continued for him, pointing between himself and his friend at the same time.

"Now one second! If James is going, so am I!" Lily added.

"NO ONE IS GOING OUT THERE TONIGHT!" shouted John over the sudden din of protest. When everyone silenced, he lowered his voice to a more appropriate tone. "It does not matter how many of you there are, or how strong any of you are; if you enter that forest before sunup, Greyback will know and he will _murder Nymphadora_ without a moment's hesitation."

Remus slowly lowered his head back down onto the table as his cleverly devised plan fell apart.

"Then what shall we do?" asked Lily, sitting down beside Remus and rubbing his back consolingly. He shrugged her off.

"Tonight, the Potters take the Evanses home, and perhaps Mrs. Pettigrew as well," said John as if he hadn't been shouting mere moments ago. "Then, the Tonkses, you kids, and I get as much rest as we can, wake before sunrise, and head out as soon as it's safe. Hopefully, in our numbers, we'll be able to keep Greyback off until Remus can get Dora safely away."

Remus lifted his head again, and for a moment John thought he would protest, but he just stared. "Have you any objections, son?"

Remus shook his head. "I just…" He swallowed. "I just can't fathom how you imagine I would be able to sleep at a time like this."

His father stared at him, and evenly said "I'm sure you'll find a way."

So, quite reluctantly, Remus, Sirius, James and Lily trudged upstairs while Peter took his mother home and the Potters escorted the Evanses to safety. They sat up for a while, but the stress of the day had taken its toll on them, and soon Lily and James were fitfully dozing. Sirius was trying to busy himself by digging through Remus's wardrobe and magically repairing some of the holes in his sweaters. After one of them started to smoke ominously, he gave up.

Remus didn't believe for a moment that he would be able to sleep at all, so instead he went out the door to the porch and climbed up onto the roof. He used to cast iron weather vane as a hand hold as he hoisted himself up. For several long moments he stared at the iron moon with the silhouette of a howling wolf cut in it, and wished very much that he could break it.

Instead, he sighed quietly, and pulled out the slightly wrinkled photograph that he had taken of Dora, which had gone into Peter's poll. He watched her, again and again until dawn, and remembered every detail of that moment. Dora had looked so pretty in the window, and so he had made Lily run up to her dorm and bring him her camera. He had snuck up to her, and as the camera had clicked she had spun around to face him. At first she had looked scared, but then she had smiled so beautifully it had been worth surprising her.

The few hours she'd been gone already felt like decades. He brushed his finger down the side of photo-Dora's face. The depiction smiled affectionately and her gray cheeks darkened in a blush.

"Dora," he whispered, though he knew she couldn't hear. "I'm so sorry."

He raised his head and saw the first feeble rays of sunlight beginning to strain their way over the treetops. For the briefest moment he wondered if he had fallen asleep after all, as he didn't feel tired and the night had felt so short, but then a long, agony-ridden scream carried on the breeze from the forest and directly to Remus's ears and in his open bedroom window, and nothing else mattered anymore.

Thinking in overdrive, Remus swung from the roof and through the window into his room, landing on the floor with a thud loud enough to wake everyone. Sirius had dropped off against his will while leaning up against the headboard. James had slept with his arms wrapped tightly and protectively around Lily, whose head was tucked into his chest.

They were all awake and rubbing their eyes frantically now, as they had also heard the scream. Lily looked as if she would be crying again if she hadn't purposefully dehydrated herself in order to stop crying the night before. They turned to Remus simultaneously, their eyes begging for answers. Peter hadn't returned during the night.

"It's time to take action, whether my dad wants us to or not. We're legally adults now; we are perfectly able of making life-threatening decisions for ourselves!" he said hastily before digging a change of clothes out of his wardrobe and changing. Sirius and James followed suit, while Lily went inside the wardrobe to change. As a last-minute thought, Remus also dug into Dora's bag to get her a change of clothes too. Only Godric knew if she may need them.

Within minutes they were all carefully opening the door leading to the porch (it squeaked something fierce if one opened it too quickly) and climbing down the lattice on the side of the house into the yard. The grass was still damp with dew, quickly permeating Remus's thin shoes and dampening his socks. He could hear his father and the Tonkses talking quietly, debating whether or not to wake them before venturing out into the forest to find Dora. He nearly gave a pessimistic chuckle; they were two steps ahead of their own parents. They slid into the forest quietly as a shadow.

"Stop here," whispered Remus after a few minutes of walking. It was dark in the shadows of the trees, but he remedied that problem simply by opening his hand; a shivering white flame appeared in his open palm. "We're going to have to split up in order to find Dora faster." Another scream, closer now, reached them and made birds squawk with fright.

"Lily and James, you two go north and west," he managed to decide, pointing in their directions. "Sirius and I will go east and south. Send a Patronus our way if you find her." The others nodded solemnly, and began to walk away before Remus quickly bade them to wait a moment.

"I can't let you all go out there unprotected." He bit his lip nervously. "I…there's something I have to do first."

He took a step back from his friends. His friends, who had never let him down before in his life. His friends, who had already proven once that they would break the law for him. Who had nearly killed one person who would have exposed him to the entire world for what he was. He made sure they were all in his sights as he tried to figure out how exactly to do what he wanted. Sirius, his face ashen with realization, took a tentative step toward him.

"Remus, you're not about to try—" he started, but he couldn't find the words to finish.

Remus was too focused to listen to Sirius anyway, his eyes tightly shut as the image of his friends and Dora swam in front of his eyelids. Lose yourself, but remain who you are. Surrender yourself, but keep your identity. It is your heart, beating in your chest; your heart is where you truly live. Give yourself to the Wolf, and remember your heart.

He let the Wolf take him.


	14. Chapter 13

I am a thirteen year old German exchange student, starting my third year at Hogwarts

Remus didn't realize that the moans of pain were coming from him until his throat was aching, and James and Sirius were about to yank his hands away from his pounding head. Before they got to him, however, the pain stopped. He opened his eyes and Lily gasped and involuntarily took a step back. Sirius and James stopped in their tracks and stared at him, disbelief written on their faces.

"What is it?" he whispered.

"Your eyes," Lily practically whimpered. "They're gold."

Remus blinked at her. Then, he wandered over to a tree where a puddle had formed in its roots. His eyes were usually a light brown that was close to gold, but now it was as if his eyes were made of the precious metal. He moved one hand up to touch the corner of his eye curiously. The movement seemed to trigger everything inside of him to start reacting to the change; suddenly he could hear everything within miles: There was a rabbit digging about two miles to the west. He could once again hear his father talking all the way back at the house. Someone in the kitchen placed a glass of water on the table. He took in a small breath with his nose and smelled rain coming in about two days. He could smell Lily's soap of, ironically, lilies, and if he concentrated he even caught a whiff of Dora's sweet green apple shampoo from her hair brushing against twigs.

He straightened up and looked at the others with wide-eyed surprise. They still looked apprehensive. "You guys, it's okay!" he said with some degree of shock. "I have all the powers of the Wolf, but I'm still myself!" He meant only to jog back to them, but he was there in less than a fraction of a second. Lily barely muffled a scream at his speed. "Sorry Lily," he amended quickly. "Now come closer you three."

They moved closer together until they were in some bizarre huddle. Carefully, Remus reached out and touched Lily's face, focusing on what he wanted to happen. They stared at one another for several moments until a tear slipped out from Lily's eye. Remus took his hand away after he brushed the tear from her cheek, then grasped Sirius and James's hands, his best friends' hands, in his own thin ones.

"I wasn't lying earlier yesterday when I said that certain traits of lycanthropy can be spread through touch;" he whispered. "This will only be temporary and can only be done on the day of the Moon. You all now share my strength and speed."

He removed his hands from James and Sirius's, but none of them moved away. A long silence stretched out that wasn't uncomfortable. James, Sirius, and Lily's eyes all held touches of gold here and there, but the color wasn't as impenetrable as Remus's. He stared at them for a very long time. His friends.

"Listen," he quietly said, staring directly into their eyes in turn even though in any other situation he would suddenly be enthralled by his shoes. His eyes itched most curiously. "Today and tonight, you're going to see a side of me I had hoped you never would. Please…_please_ try not to think any less of me, okay?"

Instead of answering him, Lily launched herself at him for a hug. Forgetting the strength Remus had transferred into her body, she sent them both flying at least ten feet backwards into the thick trunk of an oak tree. Suddenly curious, Sirius and James began testing out their powers as well.

"Jesus man, did you save any of these fancy powers for yourself?" asked Sirius as he disconnected a tree limb as thick as his waist from its trunk with such ease that he might have been picking a flower.

Remus sent him a wan smile and nodded solemnly before turning back to James and Lily. "We don't have much time; dad and the Tonkses will probably be looking for us in about an hour. We need to find Dora as quickly as possible if we want them to stay safe." There was a nod around the small circle.

"Stay safe."

Another nod, and then they were separated in the blink of an eye.

It was unusual, to say the least, to be this strong or fast. Despite the sudden ability to run at a hundred miles an hour without impaling oneself on a protruding tree branch or even getting a single scratch, they were quite clumsy. If they wanted to stop, they usually overran their target, and they picked up all sounds around them instead of figuring out how to single out one sound and trace it to its source. It took them all hours to adjust, and by the time their search became even slightly productive it was late afternoon.

Remus had paused to catch his breath in a small clearing, and took a few moments to try and find the sound of a human heartbeat nearby. He pushed aside guilt when he heard the dim sound of his father calling his name, disregarded the quick rodent-like thumps of a rabbit, cringed at the beating of Greyback's Feral heart, which went a few beats faster per minute than a human, and finally found one that was noteworthy. It was faint, but almost determined to keep beating. Then it slowed dangerously, and then stopped altogether.

And it was close.

Remus ran in the direction of the bushes that the heartbeat had been in, tore the entire bush out of the ground by its roots, and saw…

Dora.

Or, more specifically, Dora's body.

He dropped to his knees beside Dora –

(His Dora, his Dora, his sweet, beautiful, kind Dora)

- and gently cupped her cheek in his hand.

(Why, oh why, oh why, why, why?)

His breath started coming in rough gasps of pain until he was unable to breathe –

(Dear Godric, why Dora and not Remus? Why?)

- and his grief was so sudden and so strong that he couldn't even bring himself to cry.

(Why why why why why why WHY?!)

He lifted Dora's head up and pressed his face into her black hair, fighting both to breathe and to cease breathing at the same time. His entire body shook until he was certain he would be ripped apart on the inside.

(Why couldn't he have found her sooner?)

He heard another sound that was similar to the gasping and wheezing he was making, and realized the Dora was moving in his arms. He carefully lowered her to the ground to see her milky white eyes coming back to life as she heaved and choked and fought for breath. Her pallid white skin flushed to its normal pale shade of peach. She opened her eyes, tears leaked out of the corners, and she stared at him breathlessly.

"I…I…" she panted, clinging to his jacket. "I…wasn't…d-d-dead…"

"Your heart _stopped beating_!" Remus gasped, feeling tears of his own sliding down his face. "You were _dead_!"

Dora continued to shake her head feebly against his chest. "Morphed…dead…" For a moment Remus thought she was talking nonsense, but then seemed to piece it together now that his frantically rushing mind was at ease. She had morphed herself to look dead.

"Why on earth would you do something so stupid?! You nearly gave me heart failure!" he demanded, though he was as far from angry as he could be. He continued his hugging of Dora to his chest with relief.

"H-he…l-l-left…didn't he?" asked Dora weakly. Remus closed his eyes briefly and affirmed her question. So she had faked her own death just so Greyback would step away from her. Clever girl.

"Yes," he breathed, "yes he did. You're safe now, Dora. You're safe."

Slowly but surely, Dora regained her strength and was able to stand with some help. She and Remus stared at one another for several minutes, saturated in golden-pink sunlight. Finally she took a step back and managed a weak smile.

"Thank you for finding me Remus," she quietly said. "Really."

Now that she was fully in his view, Remus was able to see the extent of the damage that Greyback had inflicted upon her. She was coated with dirt from head to toe, the scratches on her neck had bled onto her shirt, and the look in her eyes told much more than physical turmoil. In those dark vessels was held such a plaintive fear of a threat already passed, and a need to feel something relatively human was evident. He strode forward and reached out to brush away the tears that lingered on her cheeks. She flinched away from the idea of his touch, and more tears made streaks in the soil on her face. Remus stepped back, and felt his face drain of all color with a frightening thought that he hadn't yet considered.

What if, because Greyback had seen anyone in his life as a target, Dora now feared him?

Before he could further ponder this thought, a new heartbeat joined those of him and Dora. It was noticeably faster than the latter. Greyback was returning for Dora's "body."

"He's coming this way," he said with some difficulty. He stepped forward and, using all of his effort to ignore her second flinch, tried to focus on giving her his strength and agility instead of how horrible and empty his life would be if Dora ended up choosing the same path that his mother had chosen.

He pointed toward the south, straight toward Meadow House, as a gold tint began to form in Dora's dark eyes. "Just keep running straight in that direction, and you'll be back at the house in no time. I have to distract Greyback. Now go!" In an effort to give her an extra boost, he practically threw her toward home, and she took off like a bullet.

Shocked and breathless, Dora realized that true, ancient magic that couldn't be channeled by a wand was at work here. She had never been so fast, or felt so graceful, in all her life. She daren't even glance at her feet for fear that it would trip her up and she would lose all momentum. Not even a single budding leaf managed to brush against her face as she ran.

After not even five minutes, Meadow House was within her sights. It looked so real and so close and so very human she could have taken it up in her hands, put the cottage into a snow globe and kept it on her windowsill to remind her of this time that she had loved so ardently.

She was close, so very nearly close, and then the ground was suddenly cracking open and she was screaming and falling. She thought she would fall longer than she did, but then she landed on a hard, jagged, stone surface. There was a loud pop, a slightly less loud crack, and a scream of agony that she didn't even recognize as her own voice, and Dora opened her eyes to find herself in a hole of sorts.

She was seeing red with the horrendous pain in her left side; her shoulder had obviously been dislocated with the awkwardness of her landing, and her collarbone may have also been broken by the way it throbbed. Carefully favoring her right side and still groaning with the effort, she pushed herself to her feet. She swayed, but managed to keep her balance, and tried to get some bearing on where, exactly, she was.

It was unlike any place Dora had ever been before. The stranger chamber was spacious and circular, similar to the Gryffindor Common Room, but made of stone and with many different levels. She appeared to be standing in a round pit in the center of the chamber that was about ten feet wide. There was a roughly two-foot high rise to a ring surrounding the pit, a three-foot rise to another ring, and then another two-foot rise until she was at the highest point of the room.

Once at the top level, Dora looked around and saw that on that lever there were six large standing mirrors. Her gaze caught something out of the corner of her eye, and she turned to it quickly, thinking there was someone beside her, but it was her own reflection. The circular wall was made of one large curved mirror. The curve was just gradual enough that there appeared to be several dozen Doras staring at her from all angles. Looking over the edge, she saw that there were two more steep steps going down that led to another circular pit along the outer edge of the room.

She cradled her injured arm to her stomach as she began to ponder how, exactly, she would get out of here. The chamber was eerily silent in comparison to the very-much-alive forest around them. It seemed to press down on her from all sides, having both a calming and unnerving affect on her.

There was a strange rustling sound above her, and she quickly looked up to the opening of the room, but there was no one there. She bit her lip worriedly. When she lowered her eyes back to the mirror, there were suddenly a thousand Greybacks coming at her from all sides.

"Think you could get away from you, did you pretty?" he growled as Dora screamed with shock and backed away as quickly as she was able. She tripped over her feet and ended up falling directly into one of the standing mirrors.

The mirror shattered, and she screamed with the pain of her shoulder being forced back into place. When she opened the eyes she hadn't even been aware of squeezing shut, Greyback's bloodshot golden eyes were only inches from her. She whimpered as he took one of his enormous hands and pinned her bad shoulder to the remains of the mirror. Flattening her good hand against the mirror, she felt one large, jagged piece of glass that was shaped perfectly like a weapon, which must have slid into her hand when the mirror shattered.

It was as if a glorious window of opportunity had opened up and spilled the light of a new dawn upon her lashes.

Greyback leaned in closer to her, his putrid breath invading her senses. "You should have stayed under that bush, pretty," he whispered. "Then I probably wouldn't have killed you. But first…" She carefully grasped the glass shard in her hand as Greyback had been speaking, and just as he was leaning down to nip at her neck, she raised her weapon. Just as the tip of his hot tongue made contact with the tender skin between her neck and shoulder, she plunged the piece of glass into his back.

Blood poured from the monster's back and Dora's hand, and she was very nearly surprised that Greyback's blood wasn't black. The vile creature let out a massive howl that quickly turned into a sickening gurgle, and spots of blood came out his mouth and spattered Dora's front. She had pierced his lung.

"You little bi-i-i-i-i-itch!" he screamed as if he had just inhaled a bucket of water. His hands, which had been, flung away from her with the pain of surprise, suddenly moved toward her throat again, and this time his claws were bared.

Dora quickly ducked under Greyback's arms, took a large step back, and was suddenly falling down into the chamber's outer pit. Her head made hard contact with the wall and left a spider-web crack in its place. Greyback staggered down the steps toward her, unsteady with loss of blood, and flattened her between the floor and wall. As Greyback's inch-long claws tore into her flesh, her screams of horror and pain reverberated throughout the chamber until they rang out through the forest too, coming first to the heightened senses of the honorary Weres and secondly to the ears of the adults. She raised up her hands in a faint effort to shield her face and eyes from the fatal claws, but couldn't save her arms or legs from the damage.

Just as she was beginning to lose all hope of ever surviving, despite the fact that her screams were still strong, there was a great shout of "LET HER GO, YOU BASTARD!"

Sirius led the way dropping into the chamber, closely followed by Lily and James. They all landed much less awkwardly than Dora had. Greyback, like a wounded, caged, and infuriated animal, shot at them, and Remus dropped down through the ceiling, landing both feet firmly in Greyback's midsection. The feral flew backwards into the side of the chamber opposite Dora, and Remus dropped down into the middle pit. The adults could be heard surrounding the opening to the chamber, shouting all sorts of curses that would distract Greyback further. Remus, declaring that he had been scarred enough for all of them, took on the feral while Sirius and James flanked his back protectively.

Lily, noticing the small pool of blood that had now formed around Dora's prone body, rushed to the younger girl's side and tried tending to her as best as she could. Her injuries, however, seemed not to respond to basic healing spells, which were all Lily knew.

"Oh, oh Dora, please hold on!" said Lily tremulously. "I'll get Remus, Greyback's pretty much incapacitated, just hold on!"

"N-n-no!" Dora choked out through the blood that was slowly filling her mouth. She could feel tears welling up in her eyes from the pain. "Please Lily…anyone but him…don't…want…to…see…"

The now fuzzy outline of Lily's fine, porcelain face nodded, and instead she called for James. Within minutes Dora was being cautiously lifted, but it still hurt like hell and she cried, and rushed her to the center of the chambers inner pit.

"John, she's here!" James shouted as he secured Dora in his arms. "She's hurt though, we're going to need some help!"

Within moments, Dora felt herself floating upward, out of the Mirror Chamber, and into another pair of arms. She inhaled deeply and smelled the mixed scents of apples and tobacco. Her dad. She burrowed her face into his jacket and sobbed weakly with pain and fear and just plain want to forget about all of this mess.

"Dora? Dora!" Remus's voice echoed from inside the chamber. Dora forced her face further into her father's chest, trembling, and she allowed Lily to take charge for her.

"Remus, get away!" she shouted. There was the distinct sound of a brief scuffle, and then it abruptly ended with a slap. "Remus, she _doesn't want_…"

With a horrible lurch of the entire earth, and a terrifying roaring in her ears, Dora blacked out.

"She's out," Ted informed John with a ghostly white face. John nodded solemnly and lowered his wand as he turned his gaze to his son. Remus was staring at Lily with white-faced shock as he slowly stepped away from Dora.

"She doesn't want…?" he whispered weakly, and Lily nodded somberly. It felt as if an enormous wooden stake had been driven into his chest, breaking his heart into two. For a split second, he was deaf but for a distant roaring in his ears, and the entire world rushed around him in a blur.

"Remus, watch the skies; we'll get Dora home!" cried John, aiming his son toward the heart of the forest. His hands shook at the sudden thought of what effect the Moon would have on his child with such stress taking its toll on his mind. Before he fully vanished into the trees, John grabbed him back and embraced him tightly. For all he knew, this would be his child's last Moon.

"He'll be alright John," James assured him as Remus started moving in the right direction.

"We'll look after him!" added Sirius. He and James flanked Remus into the trees before transforming into their animal counterparts. John didn't entirely look surprised by his offspring's friends' bout of law-breaking.

Remus made sure to run as far into the heart of the forest as he was capable of before ripping his jacket and shirt viciously from his body. The image of Dora, huddled and bloody, in her father's arms swam before his eyes, and Lily's words rang in his ears like a siren.

_She doesn't want to see you._

His very worst fear had been confirmed. He was sobbing, screaming with the unbelievable pain that came with losing one of the most important people in his life. James and Sirius grasped his arms and helped him to sit on the forest floor. They didn't speak; words could not describe their fear and pain.

Fifteen minutes later, James, with his eyes wet, reached up and roughly pressed his mouth to his brother's sandy hair before stepping away to transform. Sirius did the same, turned into Padfoot, and waited.

Dora came back to herself just before her father ascended the stairs up to Remus's room. She heard a scream of sorrow from the forest rapidly turn into a howl of agony. She closed her eyes tightly against the sound before the emerald flames swept her away.


	15. Chapter 14

I am a thirteen year old German exchange student, starting my third year at Hogwarts

Dora woke with the dawn.

She was aching all over, but able to tell that her broken bones had been healed. She managed to push herself up onto her elbows for a few moments, but then her shoulders strained and she only just managed not to cry out. For several minutes she had to just lie there, panting with the pain, before she was able to look around.

She was back in Remus's room. She felt lonely in his enormous bed, even though Lily was curled up at the foot of the bed. Craning her neck just the right way, she could see that the other girl was covered in dirt and had been crying during the night. She was now soundly asleep.

Gray light was flooding in through the window, and Dora could hear birds chirping. She hated it. She felt rather than saw that she was wearing Remus's worn-out and incredibly comfortable pajamas. For no reason at all, she began to weep quietly into the pillow. She didn't hear John entering until he was carefully tucking the sheets closer around her. She stopped crying with a halting gulp of hair and watched the older man warily. He sat down on the end of the bed, being cautious so as not to jostle Lily too much.

"How are you feeling, Dora?" he asked, prudently offering her a handkerchief without questioning her tears. "Any pain?"

"When I move," supplied Dora after she had mastered herself. "Mostly in my shoulders."

John nodded understandingly. "I'm not too surprised, really; that thing really dug its claws into them," he said quietly. He helped Dora to sit up and inspected her shoulders closely before daubing a slightly viscous sherbet-orange potion into the wounds. The pain lessened, but the tightness of the partially-healed skin did not. He also added potion liberally to the deep cuts on her arms and legs.

"Now, I'm no expert, but it looks to me like you'll make a full recovery; though there might be a bit of soreness in your right knee once in a while," concluded the older man. He showed her how one of Greyback's claws had penetrated her knee cap. "Before I go, would you mind doing some morphing for me?"

Dora nodded, suddenly apprehensive. Why would he need to see her morph? Was there something wrong with her powers? She shook her head slightly and focused on changing her hair from brown to black, a normally easy task, but it took all of her concentration. In the end, she was making probably a horribly unpleasant face, and her eyes were leaking with the effort she had put into it. And it _hurt_.

"That's enough Dora, thank you," John said quickly upon seeing the pain on her face. Dora took in a deep breath, and the black that had been slowly creeping toward the ends of her hair shrank back into her head until her hair was brown again. She fell back against the pillows, trying not to be faintly sick.

"I'll leave you to rest now." John was nearly at the door when he stopped and turned around again. "Dora…what happened when you were alone with Greyback?"

Dora didn't answer him. She probably never would.

After John was gone, Lily woke up. Without acknowledging Dora's presence in the room, she strode to the window and sat down, staring out toward the forest. Dora watched Lily watch the trees for a very long time. She could see the concern on the older witch's face, and realized that she must be worried sick about James with Greyback still out there. She knew that she was worried enough about Remus. After long enough, Dora forced herself to her unsteady feet, and nearly collapsed into a chair beside Lily.

They kept watch in silence.

Remus woke with the dawn.

On any other given month, he would have slept off the aftereffects of the Moon until nine or ten in the morning, but despite his pain and exhaustion he staggered to his feet. Sirius and James had transformed in their sleep, and they quickly sat up by the commotion that ensued when Remus collapsed.

"Moony, s'too early," James moaned, rubbing his eyes in an attempt to rouse himself. "You're gonna get hurt." Remus ignored him.

"I have to see Dora," he said blearily, weakly pulling on his clothes. Sirius pushed himself upright and, knowing that Remus was both too proud to ask and not about to agree to waiting until he was stronger, helped him dress.

"We should check on the creature," said Sirius with strong distaste etched across his handsome face. He and James supported the reluctant werewolf between them and trekked to the opening of the Mirror Chamber.

"I'll go down, just in case," insisted Remus before carefully lowering himself down. He landed on shaky legs and keeled over, but managed to pull himself upright before James and Sirius were given the chance to rush to his aid. He slowly traveled the perimeter of the chamber, following the patterns of blood spots on the stone floor.

Finally, he found the feral lying facedown on the ground, covered in blood and a few scraps of what had once been its clothes. Remus turned it over with his foot, and the sight would have usually been enough to make him vomit, but he couldn't find it in himself to care anymore. Not without Dora there with him.

"It's dead."

His voice echoed around the chamber, and he heard James and Sirius sigh with relief above. He limped calmly to the center pit, and allowed his friends to get him out.

They returned to the edge of the forest in silence.

"I'm afraid," said John, interrupting the emotional silence of the kitchen. Andromeda and Ted Tonks looked away from the fire to see him staring out the window pensively. "Remus is taking too long; I should go look for him." He was halfway to the door before he had finished the sentence.

"John, I'm sure he'll be…" started Andromeda calmly, but she faltered and didn't finish. She really didn't know if Remus would be alright or not.

"We'll help you look," Ted interrupted to cover up for the silence that had ensued. He and Andromeda had barely gotten up when there were suddenly feet thundering down the steps. Lily shot through the kitchen, tears streaming down her face and crying "James!" She nearly collided with the door, but managed to block any impact with her hand and yanked the door open. John, Ted, and Andromeda exchanged a glance and rushed outside after her.

James had separated from the small group to run to Lily and crush her in an embrace. They were both highly emotional as they collided too quickly and fell into the tall grass. John peered around them and saw Sirius just barely managing to hold his son upright. He ran to them.

"Remus, son, it's alright," he said soothingly, even though Remus didn't look distressed as much as exhausted. John helped Sirius support him.

"Greyback's dead," he muttered dully with a numb look in his eye. John felt a rush of sickening relief wash over him for only a moment before it was shattered. "Where's Dora?"

His eyes roved to the door, behind which he could see Dora staring intensely at him. He couldn't see her clearly through the screen in the door, but he could vaguely make out the dull shade of her hair. Her hand was pressed up against the screen, but she did not come out. She met his eye, nodded, then turned away from him. His heart plummeted.

Remus, Dora, Sirius, James, and Lily were moved to the Hogwarts Hospital Wing as soon as Remus was brought to the house and checked over for any immediate danger. He was given a clean bill of health from his father. Dora had Flooed with Lily, who had suddenly become overly protective of the younger girl. This only worsened Remus's anxiety, seeing one of his best friends lash out at anyone who came too near to Dora beside her parents.

Once in the Infirmary, Dora was placed in a curtained bed in the corner of the room. Lily, once she was given a clean bill of health, seated herself firmly in front of the gap in the curtains. If anyone besides Dora's parents, Madam Pomfrey, or a Professor tried to enter, she would kick them until they left. Even James was not safe from her foot-induced wrath, proven by his bruised shin after he tried to pass Dora a note from Remus. She even hissed in a most feline-like fashion at Sirius, who barked at her in return, but it didn't scare her off as he had hoped.

It had gone on in this way for three days before Remus finally cracked from the combined pressure of not seeing Dora, knowing his mum was gone forever and not knowing how to feel about it, Greyback's death in general, and _no one_ wanted to get him started on the upcoming NEWTs or they would surely believe they were going to perish from the panicked rant that ensued. He stormed up to the hospital wing, saw that Lily had dozed off in her chair, and strode toward Dora's bed behind the curtains.

In a blink he was on the ground moaning after Lily's foot made hard contact with a _very_ sensitive area on his anatomy. "Don't even think on it, Lupin," said Lily protectively.

After he was able to breathe properly again, Remus slowly rose to his feet and scowled at her. "I want to see her, Lily!"

"Too bad, Lupin!" snapped the Head Girl menacingly.

"Let me in, Evans!" Remus snarled.

"No chance, Lupin!" Lily hissed.

"Lily," came Dora's weary voice from behind the curtains. Lily kicked Remus one more time before making a face-sized hole to peer into.

"Yes, Dora?" asked Lily kindly.

"Just let him in."

Lily hesitated. "Are you sure?"

"Not at all, but let him in anyway," said Dora, and she sounded so reluctant it made Remus reluctant to go in himself. Lily shot him a venomous look that clearly said 'well, you wanted in so bad, so go!' With a small sigh, he slowly entered the curtained enclosure.

Dora was lying down in the bed with the covers pulled up past her chin. Her back was facing him, and she showed no signs of turning around or sitting up. He carefully inched his way to the side of the bed she was facing, and knelt down to be at her eye-level. She stared woodenly back at him, not even blinking.

"Dora," he said quietly. She blinked, at least in her one eye that wasn't buried in her pillow. "Dora, I am so sorry." Her gaze suddenly left his and moved down toward the pillow. Her eyes were wet, and Remus couldn't fight the urge to ask: "Dora, do you hate me?"

Dora's attention suddenly snapped back to him. "What?"

"Do you hate me?"

Her mouth parted slightly in surprise. "Remus, why would I hate you?" Her voice was weak and reedy, as if she hadn't spoken in days. Remus swallowed painfully past the lump in his throat.

"Because of what I am, what I'm capable of on the full moon. And because being associated with me makes you a target to all angry Ferals," he admitted tightly.

Dora hesitated slightly. "What happened to Greyback?"

"He-…" Remus didn't want to tell her that she had killed him. He knew that if he had been responsible for the death of someone even so lowly as Fenrir Greyback, it would still eat at him for the rest of his life. And Dora was probably the only person on earth who would feel the same way, simply because she had taken the life of a living being, no matter how horrible that living being had been.

"James's parents called the Werewolf Capture Unit at the Ministry," he decided carefully. Dora didn't look entirely convinced. "Greyback tried to get away, and they had no choice but to kill him. But that doesn't change the fact that there are still Ferals out there that don't approve of me trying to live a human life."

A soft sigh escaped Dora's lips. "…I don't hate you, Remus," concluded Dora.

Remus had never felt more confused. "Then…then why didn't you want to see me if you weren't totally disgusted?" He hadn't meant to sound like such a child about it, but he had been upset. And the confused look in Dora's eyes told him that they had both been duped.

"Who told you I didn't want to see you?" she asked.

"Lily."

Dora's eyebrows furrowed. "She must have misunderstood me," she decided as the sound of Lily gasping and quickly leaving the Hospital Wing reached their ears. Dora's eyes sought out Remus's, and they became curiously wet again. "It wasn't that I didn't want to see you; I didn't want _you_ to see _me_."

"_Why?"_ gasped Remus.

Dora sniffed as tears began to build more quickly in her eyes. "Can you help me sit up?" she asked thickly. Her left hand wound out from under herself and Remus grasped it in his, and helped her to sit up. Her hand instantly slid out of his, and both of her hands covered her face.

Remus couldn't help himself; he recoiled in horror at the sight of Dora, his wonderful Dora who had never done anything wrong, covered in mostly-healed claw marks up and down her arms and on the back of her neck. Dora heard his gasp and started crying into her hands softly. Remus quickly managed to master himself, even though horrible guilt was coursing through his veins at the sight of the wounds that had been inflicted upon her because of him. He reached for one of Dora's hands, but she refused to take them away from her face. Apprehension sprouted in his stomach and twisted unpleasantly; what had happened to her face?

"Dora, please," he pleaded with her gently. Her shaking sobs quieted slightly, and after over a minute she allowed Remus to pull her left hand away from her face. There was one thin vertical scar running over her left eye, an ugly pink mark on her pale flawless skin. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

"I'm ugly, aren't I?" she asked weakly. "I won't be able to morph over any of them for months, maybe even years, because they won't be fully healed. Though Madam Pomfrey reckons that if your dad hadn't tended to them so quickly I wouldn't be able to morph over them at all."

Remus felt despair on Dora's behalf, remembering showing her how she was the prettiest girl in Gryffindor house. That day, only about a week ago, suddenly felt as if it had been decades since. He wanted to make it better for her, to tell her something that would reassure her that everything would be alright. His brow furrowed as he looked carefully at the scar on her face. He reached out, took her face tenderly in his hand, and pulled it closer.

"Remus, what—?"

"This isn't from Greyback," Remus interrupted her. His thumb brushed against the scar. "It's too thin and straight to be from a claw." He raised Dora's chin so he was looking in her eyes instead of at her scar, and smiled. "This is just from a piece of glass; you should be able to morph over it right now."

Dora's eyes widened slightly, and the smallest glimmer of hope shone in them, but then vanished as quickly as it had appeared. Her head bowed, and stayed that way for a very long time, and Remus was just beginning to worry about the shaking of her shoulders when she looked up again. Her face was contorted with pain, and the scar was only slightly diminished. Dora hand never had problems morphing before, and it worried Remus, but he had perfect faith that her powers would return to her when she was strong again. She weakly smiled at him, and he returned it readily.

It was another few days before Dora had regained enough strength to leave the Infirmary. Remus had met her outside the Hospital Wing doors, and from that instant onward they were inseparable, unless they were in class. They ate and studied together, and on more than one occasion they were found asleep on the Common Room sofa by the Marauders or Lily.

It was two weeks after Greyback's attack, five days after Dora left the Infirmary, that she quietly asked Remus if she could ask him something alone. Remus, not having seen Dora much of the morning, nodded immediately and left the rest of the lads to study in the Library without him.

"What's up?" he asked. A small part of his brain was yelling 'she's going to ask you out!', but his rational side told him that Dora looked far too serous for that. She kept her eyes focused on her trainers as she scuffed the floor with one toe. Remus wasn't sure if he had imagined it or not, but a few drops of moisture appeared around her feet on the stone floor.

"I'm…" she faltered slightly, and reached up with one hand to roughly wipe at her face. Her voice was shaky. "I'm not feeling very well…" She sniffed and raised her head to look at him tearfully. "D'you think you could walk with me to the hospital wing? I just…I just really don't want to go by myself."

Without hesitation, Remus draped his arm over Dora's shoulders and walked with her up to the Infirmary. Once they arrived and Madam Pomfrey asked what her affliction was, Dora suddenly went silent. She pressed her lips together tightly and stared straight ahead, her pale cheeks flushed. After nearly a minute Madam Pomfrey instructed Remus to wait outside, and took Dora to her office. Remus sat down in the seat specified by the matron, and balanced his chin in his hand as he waited nervously.

He listened to the muffled low soothing tones of Madam Pomfrey's voice through the wall, followed by Dora's higher and shakier ones, unable to make out any real words. After about five minutes of this, there was another minute of solid silence. Madam Pomfrey murmured something quietly, and suddenly Dora was screaming.

Remus leaped out of his chair and ran toward the office door, grasping the handle and shaking it desperately. "Dora, what's going on?! Dora? Dora, open the door!"

"_Get it out of me_!" wailed Dora from behind the door. "_I don't care what you have to do, just get it out! I don't care if you have to chop me open, just do it! Get the fucking thing out of me!_"

Remus recoiled from the sounds of Dora's angry sobbing, and was so shocked he didn't even process her words. Madam Pomfrey was speaking hurriedly, trying to keep her patient calm and figure out what to do at the same time.

"Just take this potion dear, stay the night, and everything will be taken care of, I assure you…if you do, indeed, think this is the right choice?"

"_Why else would I be telling you to get the thing out of me?! I don't want it!_" Dora shouted and sobbed at the same time, making her words almost unintelligible.

There was another five minutes before Madam Pomfrey gently led Dora out of her office and straight into Remus's arms, as he had been standing directly outside the entire time. "Dora, what is it? What happened?" he asked softly. Madam Pomfrey shook her head sharply at him, and he fell quiet.

"To a bed, Lupin," the matron instructed him, and Remus half-carried Dora to the nearest bed. She collapsed onto it, breathing shallowly and keeping her eyes shut. "Don't feel obligated to stay either; I'll look after her in case she gets sick."

"No, I'll stay," said Remus quietly, sitting on the edge of the bed and brushing Dora's hair out of her face. She opened her dark glittering eyes and stared at him gratefully. He smiled warmly at her, and held her hand. Dora squeezed it weakly as her face turned a sickly green color. Madam Pomfrey quickly handed Remus a small tub, and he held it for her. Dora, quietly admitting that she hated being sick ever since she was a little kid, started weeping as she forced herself not to be sick.

Remus lost track of the time he spent with Dora that night in the Infirmary. All he was aware of after a time was the weight of her head in his lap, and the trembling of her feverish back under his hand. He stayed awake until around dawn, when Madam Pomfrey came out of her office and declared that Dora would be alright. Remus then sank down to lie beside Dora and fell asleep; hoping desperately that the matron spoke the truth.


	16. Chapter 15

I am a thirteen year old German exchange student, starting my third year at Hogwarts

"_There are two ways to think of love: as a chain that binds or a choice that liberates."_ --Anonymous

The weeks passed like the wink of an eye, or a whisper of wind. And with these weeks came the first full moon after Greyback's death. After his transformation, for five minutes, Remus-the-wolf went completely wild, digging its teeth and claws into everything within a four foot radius (including his friends), but after those minutes it was almost as if he had been in his right mind. He was not calm, per se, but more like resigned. It was as if the part of Remus that was now the minority in the Wolf's mind knew that the only way he would be free of his burden would be to meet the same fate as his creator.

Along with the Moon came the end-of-year exams. The NEWTs left all of the seventh-years stressed and unable to sleep or eat properly. Dora meanwhile was doing her best to study for her own exams and help her seventh-year friends study at the same time. To say that they were grateful for her help would be a massive understatement, especially when it came to Peter, because when all of his friends were studying for the same exam he had no one to help him.

They all finished their exams at the same time, after the Defense Against the Dark Arts final, and headed out to the beech tree beside the lake in high spirits. Peter was weighed down with worry that he had missed several questions that were imperative to his passing the exam, but the rest of them were perfectly confident that they had breezed through the test easily.

With a contented sigh, they all sprawled onto the grass in a lopsided circle, their heads in the middle and hair fanned out gracefully. The day could not have been more perfect for this. Warm sunlight fell from the sky and bathed them all in gold. Everything around them sparkled, and looked so surreal it was as if the magic that clung to the air had suddenly become visible. There was just enough humidity to still be comfortable, and fluffy white clouds drifted tantalizingly across the forget-me-not blue sky. The grass was cool and soft, and it whispered sweet nothings as the gentle breeze traveled through it.

Everyone simultaneously sighed with relaxation, and closed their eyes contentedly. "I can't believe the year's almost over," Lily said after a long and comfortable silence.

"_I_ can't believe we're _graduating_," said Sirius.

"If I even graduate at all," Peter grumbled darkly. Everyone joined in a chorus of affirmation on his behalf, until the sound of a muffled sniffle made them fall silent again.

"Dora?"

"You're killing the mood; what's wrong?"

Dora clasped a hand over her mouth until her shaking stopped, and wiped her eyes. "I just…" she sighed before her voice hitched again. "What am I going to do without you all next year? I'll be all alone again."

As if on cue, everyone but Dora turned over onto their stomachs and began rummaging in their robes. "We anticipated this outburst," Sirius informed her when she looked at them questioningly.

"And it also turns out that my parents, whilst cleaning out the basement, found a whole case of these things," finished James, pulling out a set of two-way mirrors. Dora rolled over onto her stomach and gaped at them as they each pulled out their own pairs in turn and presented her with one mirror from each set.

"How…?" she weakly asked with wide eyes as Remus gave his mirror to her last and with a very red face.

"This was in my room; Dad owled it out a few days ago," he muttered, and Dora beamed at them all. Abruptly, as if there had been some sort of explosion of emotion inside of her, every color of the rainbow flashed through her hair until it settled on a radiant shade of bubblegum pink, and her eyes a sparkling violet.

"Thank you," she finally said, and true gratitude dripped from every syllable. "Thank you all so, so much." Everyone murmured you're-welcomes as Dora stowed the mirrors into her bag and they all settled back into the grass.

As she gazed up at the sky, the afternoon sun kissing her eyes tenderly, an overwhelming feeling blossomed in Dora's chest. It was as if someone had lit a torch and was currently bathing her soul in its warming yellow glow. The feeling bloomed and grew until it had consumed her fully, and only then did she fully understand what it was.

It was love.

She loved these people around her in the grass, and she was almost certain that they loved her too. She loved her parents, despite the fights they may have had in the past, and now knew that everything they had done to irritate her had been out of love. She loved John Lupin like a second father. She loved Remus Lupin in a way words could not describe. And someday, she might even begin to learn how to love herself, but there would always be that struggle there, just as Remus would constantly endure a similar struggle that would undoubtedly last until his dying day. If Remus hid his internal battle so well, and could still manage to smile every day, then Dora could bring herself to do so as well.

She had never allowed herself to dream of the future when she had always been on the brink of ending the possibility of that future, but now, when she dared to, one thing was certain: Remus Lupin would be there.

"Okay, I'm going to explode if I don't ask," said Peter in a rush, breaking the silence yet again. "Are Moony and Dora an item or not?"

There was another collective sigh around the circle, and to everyone's surprise, James answered with: "Moony and Dora aren't going out, Wormtail."

"What?!" Dora, Remus, Peter, and Sirius simultaneously asked. Lily was not at all phased, instantly sprouting suspicion.

"It's true," said the Head Girl calmly, "Dora and Remus couldn't _possibly_ be a couple."

"_Why?_"

Dora and Remus blinked confusedly at one another, curious as to why they felt so suddenly defensive.

"Well, it's _obvious,_ isn't it?" asked James with wide-eyed innocence. At the others' blank stares, he and Lily elaborated.

"You've never held hands unless one of you was in mortal peril," James pointed out.

It was suddenly as if Dora and Remus's hands had been transfigured into magnets. Their hands slid the few inches through the grass, and their fingers interlocked like the gears of a clock. It was too perfect to be a coincidence. They refused to look into one another's eyes, as if their racing heartbeats would be detected if they did.

"You've never sat closer than about two inches apart," added Lily.

The action was, again, involuntary. At first they thought that Lily had just not seen any of the times they sat close together, but then realized that they really hadn't ever been less than two inches apart. They started sliding their bodies subtly toward one another, the whisper of the breeze covering up their sounds so it couldn't be detected, when suddenly they both had obstacles: Each other. They turned bright red but didn't move away.

"You've never touched each other in places that wouldn't be considered only friendly," said James.

It was as if they had been put under the Imperius Curse, without the euphoria and with added nerves. Remus's right hand smoothly slid over and trailed across Dora's stomach, the movement lasting only a second, but making her shiver. She shyly reached with her left hand and rested it for a moment upon his thigh. Then, unable to look him in the face, she instead buried her eyes in his shoulder.

"You've just never had that…_moment_," Lily described vaguely. At James's sound of question, she elaborated. "Well, it's this moment, and…well…. You look into each other's eyes, and you say 'I love you' without really saying it…. I mean, well…you don't even _mean_ to say it, it just _happens!_ Or…oh, I don't know, but it's a pivotal moment between friendship and partnership anyway."

Neither Dora nor Remus had ever felt such fear in their lives, even when the threat of Greyback hung over them. This was the moment that their friendship could be torn apart.

_If I look at him,_ Dora thought in panicked tones, _and he can see it, but doesn't feel the same way…I think I would die._

_I can't do it,_ Remus internally decided. _I just_ can't. _I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't! If she didn't…or if she _did…_and I couldn't give her everything she ever wanted…it would kill me._

But they had never really had any choice in the matter.

Dora's head slowly pulled away from Remus's shoulder, as if she were trying not to do it, and Remus bent his head down so he could see her better. Dora's hands shook as she managed to force her head up and looked directly into Remus's golden-brown eyes. Neither looked away for a very long time, scrutinizing every glimmer in one another's irises.

And then it happened.

With gasps as great that they may have just survived drowning, Dora and Remus shot straight up, past even sitting up and going straight to standing. Their hands flew away from one another as one continued to gape at the other in shock. They were both breathing heavily, and their hands were trembling, and none of the others looked very surprised. They could practically feel James and Lily's smugness rolling off of them in pulsating waves, but they didn't care.

"M-m-maybe we should…uh…" Remus ran a hand roughly through his hair as he finally tore his eyes away from Dora, scuffing the ground with his toe.

"Yes?" asked Dora, taking a timid step closer. Remus glanced at her for the briefest moment, and then looked away again rapidly, wondering if she could hear his heart thudding as well as he could.

"M-maybe we should…erm…head…inside…now…"

For the briefest moment, Dora almost looked disappointed. But then she enthusiastically nodded and earnestly said "Yeah, definitely."

And yet they didn't move.

Remus's eyes shyly traveled up Dora's frame until they finally landed in her brilliant eyes, and the most peculiar pang of emotion rang through him like a bell. His shaking hands were suddenly like small earthquakes at his sides, and his palms were sweaty and he couldn't have felt more alive if he had just been born. Looking at Dora, imagining that shy smile creeping up her flushed cheeks every time she laid eyes on him, he thought: _Maybe that smile really_ was _just for me all along._

And it made him_ happy_. Happier than he'd ever felt before. Because now, looking at that smile on her face and knowing that it was just for him, he let himself embrace those half-imagined future he had always dreamt up against his own will. Ever since he had been bitten, and his father would weep the day of every full moon, and his mother left them, he had never let himself imagine a future. He had been far too fragile then, too lonely and breakable, to imagine a future. But when he slept, and he had no choice, he would dream. Not of little cottages with daisies round the door, or even dozens of children frolicking in the garden, but of _that_ person. That one person in the world who knew not only _what_ he was, but _who_ he was as well, and loved him despite that. The one who would always be there after the full moon, able to face him without cringing with fear (something that was even becoming difficult for the other Marauders with his increasingly violent transformations). The one who told him they loved him every day, and not because they were obligated to do so.

And he had found her.

Dora was just like him in so many ways. She, too, had troubles with herself. She was a Shape-Shifter, a supposed "dark creature," just like him, but she was still good. She fought against those who were more like her than anyone in the world, if they used their abilities to service the Dark Lord. She wasn't afraid to cavort with other Dark Creatures, if she had seen that they were good in their heart of hearts.

Yes, they were alike in so many ways, but in some ways they were also different. Dora chose when she changed her shape, if her physical state allowed it. Remus was a slave to the moon. Dora's only internal enemy was herself. Remus's internal enemy was the cursed half of his soul. When things were looking up, Dora was goofy and loud and always falling over. Remus, even at the best of times, liked things quiet and forced himself to always be calm and couldn't get tripped up by only a stretch of bare floor even if he tried.

But they fit together. Emotionally and physically, they fit perfectly together.

And Remus refused to let _that one person_ in the world who truly knew him, slip from his grasp.

But still, he was a coward. "We really should go inside."

Again, Dora nodded, so Remus turned away.

Dora could feel her stomach twisting in knots as Remus seemed to turn away in slow-motion. His eyes lingered on her for an abnormally long time, and somehow she knew. She knew, deep within her heart of hearts, that this was the time.

It was now or never.

He was probably two steps away before the words were bursting forth from her like a dam exploding.

"Oh, just kiss me!"

Instantly, as if he had also known that this was their only chance, or that he had known she would speak before she did, Remus spun on his heel nearly before she had finished speaking, took her face in his long thin fingers.

She didn't kiss him.

He didn't kiss her.

_They kissed_.

Even if the past several months had been trying on all of them, even if Dora and Remus would be fighting with some part of themselves for the rest of their lives, even if Dora would never reveal what had happened in those hours she had been alone with Greyback, as their friends leaped to their feet and thanked Merlin that it had finally happened, Dora and Remus knew that everything would be alright. They had weeks, months, maybe even years to just be there for one another.

In their young eyes, that was better than forever.

**END**


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